Related papers: Gravitational lens modelling in a citizen science …
Modern applications of strong gravitational lensing require the ability to use precise and varied observational data to constrain complex lens models. I discuss two sets of computational methods for lensing calculations. The first is a new…
Strong gravitational lenses are a rare and instructive type of astronomical object. Identification has long relied on serendipity, but different strategies -- such as mixed spectroscopy of multiple galaxies along the line of sight, machine…
Over the past decade advancements in the understanding of several astrophysical phenomena have allowed us to infer a concordance cosmological model that successfully accounts for most of the observations of our universe. This has opened up…
The observables in a strong gravitational lens are usually just the image positions and sometimes the flux ratios. We develop a new and simple algorithm which allows a set of models to be fitted exactly to the observations. Taking our cue…
This paper examines free-form modeling of gravitational lenses using Bayesian ensembles of pixelated mass maps. The priors and algorithms from previous work are clarified and significant technical improvements are made. Lens reconstruction…
Lens modeling is the key to successful and meaningful automated strong galaxy-scale gravitational lens detection. We have implemented a lens-modeling "robot" that treats every bright red galaxy (BRG) in a large imaging survey as a potential…
I describe a new approach (developed in collaboration with D.E. Holz) to calculating the statistical distributions for magnification, shear, and rotation of images of cosmological sources due to gravitational lensing by mass inhomogeneities…
Gravitational lensing is the relativistic effect generated by massive bodies, which bend the space-time surrounding them. It is a deeply investigated topic in astrophysics and allows validating theoretical relativistic results and studying…
Strong gravitational lenses are unique cosmological probes. These produce multiple images of a single source. Whether a single galaxy, a group or a cluster, extracting cosmologically relevant information requires an accurate modeling of the…
We have developed a new software tool, Lensview, for modelling resolved gravitational lens images. Based on the LensMEM algorithm, the software finds the best fitting lens mass model and source brightness distribution using a maximum…
Spectroscopic selection has been the most productive technique for the selection of galaxy-scale strong gravitational lens systems with known redshifts. Statistically significant samples of strong lenses provide a powerful method for…
We report the discovery of 29 promising (and 59 total) new lens candidates from the CFHT Legacy Survey (CFHTLS) based on about 11 million classifications performed by citizen scientists as part of the first Space Warps lens search. The goal…
We present lenscat, a public and community-contributed catalog of strong gravitational lenses found by electromagnetic surveys. The main objective of lenscat is to compile a simple, easy-to-access catalog that can be used in a variety of…
In these lectures I give an overview of gravitational lensing, concentrating on theoretical aspects, including derivations of some of the important results. Topics covered include the determination of surface mass densities of intervening…
Estimation of time delays from a noisy and gapped data is one of the simplest data analysis problems in astronomy by its formulation. But as history of real experiments show, the work with observed data sets can be quite complex and…
The effect of gravitational wave of cosmological wavelength on the gravitational lensing is investigated. When the source, deflector, and observer are aligned in a highly symmetric configuration, an Einstein ring will be observed by the…
Predictions of the standard thin lens approximation and a new iterative approach to gravitational lensing are compared with an ``exact'' approach in simple test cases involving one or two lenses. We show that the thin lens and iterative…
When traveling from their source to the observer, gravitational waves can get deflected by massive objects along their travel path. When the lens is massive enough and the source aligns closely with the line-of-sight to the lens, the wave…
Gravitational lensing allows us to probe the structure of matter on a broad range of astronomical scales, and as light from a distant source traverses an intervening galaxy, compact matter such as planets, stars, and black holes act as…
It is shown that gravitational lensing by point masses arranged in an infinitely extended regular lattice can be studied analytically using the Weierstrass functions. In particular, we draw the critical curves and the caustic networks for…