Related papers: The strongest gravitational lenses: III. The order…
Strong lensing has developed into an important astrophysical tool for probing both cosmology and galaxies (their structure, formation, and evolution). Using the gravitational lensing theory and cluster mass distribution model, we try to…
We explore the lowest mass limit that can be placed on the halo mass function in CDM using 28 strong gravitational lenses. For this purpose, we study an extreme model in which the halo mass function and mass-concentration relation follow…
We develop a theory of Einstein rings and demonstrate it using the infrared Einstein ring images of the quasar host galaxies observed in PG1115+080, B1608+656 and B1938+666. The shape of an Einstein ring accurately and independently…
Halos formed in the standard Lambda cold dark matter framework should follow an universal mass density profile and fit a well defined mass-concentration relation. Lensing analyses of clusters with a large Einstein radius seem to contradict…
Small distortions in the images of Einstein rings or giant arcs offer the exciting prospect of detecting dark matter haloes or subhaloes of mass below $10^9$M$_{\odot}$, most of which are too small to have made a visible galaxy. A very…
In the coming years, strong gravitational lens discoveries are expected to increase in frequency by two orders of magnitude. Lens-modelling techniques are being developed to prepare for the coming massive influx of new lens data, and blind…
Strong gravitational lenses come in many forms, but are typically divided into two populations: galaxies, and groups and clusters of galaxies. The largest objects in the Universe (i.e. galaxy clusters) are highly irregular and composed of…
A key observational prediction of Einstein's Equivalence Principle is that light undergoes redshift when it escapes from a gravitational field. Although astrophysics provides a wide variety of physical conditions in which this redshift…
We present a study of HerS-3, a dusty star-forming galaxy at zspec = 3.0607, which is gravitationally amplified into an Einstein cross with a fifth image of the background galaxy seen at the center of the cross. Detailed 1-mm spectroscopy…
It is well known that measurements of H0 from gravitational lens time delays scale as H0~1-k_E where k_E is the mean convergence at the Einstein radius R_E but that all available lens data other than the delays provide no direct constraints…
We report on the discovery of a very bright z = 2.00 star-forming galaxy that is strongly lensed by a foreground z=0.422 luminous red galaxy (LRG). This system was found in a systematic search for bright arcs lensed by LRGs and brightest…
We use AStroLens, a newly developed gravitational lens-modeling code that relies only on geometric and photometric information of cluster galaxies as input, to map the strong-lensing regions and estimate the lensing strength of 96 galaxy…
We present theoretical and observational studies of strong gravitational lenses produced by clusters of galaxies. Our purpose is to test the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model at small and highly non-linear scales where it has been claimed that…
In this work we present for the first time an analytic framework for calculating the individual and joint distributions of the n-th most massive or n-th highest redshift galaxy cluster for a given survey characteristic allowing to formulate…
The cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model unambigously predicts that a large number of haloes should survive as subhaloes when they are accreted into a larger halo. The CDM model would be ruled out if such substructures were shown not…
Caustic-crossing stars observed in giant arcs behind galaxy clusters provide a powerful probe of dark matter substructure. While previous work has focused on point-like lenses such as primordial black holes, we extend this framework to…
We report the discovery of four very bright, strongly-lensed galaxies found via systematic searches for arcs in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 and 6. These were followed-up with spectroscopy and imaging data from the Astrophysical…
Magnification bias is a gravitational lensing effect that is normally overlooked because it is considered sub-optimal in comparison with the lensing shear. Thanks to the demonstrated optimal characteristics of the sub-millimetre galaxies…
The statistics of strongly lensed arcs in samples of galaxy clusters provide information on cluster structure that is complementary to that from individual clusters. However, samples of clusters that have been analyzed to date have been…
Unveiling the true nature of Dark Matter (DM), which manifests itself only through gravity, is one of the principal quests in physics. Leading candidates for DM are weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) or ultralight bosons (axions),…