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A few dark matter substructures have recently been detected in strong gravitational lenses though their perturbations of highly magnified images. We derive a characteristic scale for lensing perturbations and show that this is significantly…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-08-30 Quinn E. Minor , Manoj Kaplinghat , Nan Li

The cold dark matter scenario predicts that a large number of dark subhalos should be located within the halo of each Milky-way sized galaxy. One tell-tale signature of such dark subhalos could be additional milliarcsecond-scale image…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 E. Zackrisson , T. Riehm , O. Moeller , K. Wiik , P. Nurmi

To set useful limits on the abundance of small-scale dark matter halos (subhalos) in a galaxy scale, we have carried out mid-infrared imaging and integral-field spectroscopy for a sample of quadruple lens systems showing anomalous flux…

We show how observations of multiply-imaged quasars at high redshift can be used as a probe of dark matter clumps (subhalos with masses ~ 10^9 solar masses) within the virialized extent of more massive lensing halos. A large abundance of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 R. Benton Metcalf , Piero Madau

The cold dark matter (DM) model predicts that every galaxy contains thousands of DM subhalos; almost all other DM models include a physical process that smooths away the subhalos. The subhalos are invisible, but could be detected via strong…

Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for constraining substructure in the mass distribution of galaxies, be it from the presence of dark matter sub-halos or due to physical mechanisms affecting the baryons throughout galaxy evolution.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-10-28 Georgios Vernardos , Grigorios Tsagkatakis , Yannis Pantazis

Strong gravitational lenses enable direct inference of halo abundance and internal structure, which in turn enable constraints on the nature of dark matter and the primordial matter power spectrum. However, the density profiles of dark…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-07-29 Xiaolong Du , Daniel Gilman , Tommaso Treu , Andrew Benson , Charles Gannon

Strong gravitational lenses are a singular probe of the universe's small-scale structure $\unicode{x2013}$ they are sensitive to the gravitational effects of low-mass $(<10^{10} M_\odot)$ halos even without a luminous counterpart. Recent…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-04-24 Sebastian Wagner-Carena , Jaehoon Lee , Jeffrey Pennington , Jelle Aalbers , Simon Birrer , Risa H. Wechsler

We demonstrate that the perturbations of strongly lensed images by low-mass dark matter subhalos are significantly impacted by the concentration of the perturbing subhalo. For subhalo concentrations expected in $\Lambda$CDM, significant…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2021-08-11 Quinn E. Minor , Manoj Kaplinghat , Tony H. Chan , Emily Simon

Modeling the mass distribution of galaxy-scale strong gravitational lenses is a task of increasing difficulty. The high-resolution and depth of imaging data now available render simple analytical forms ineffective at capturing lens…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2022-12-21 Aymeric Galan , Georgios Vernardos , Austin Peel , Frédéric Courbin , Jean-Luc Starck

High-resolution N-body simulations of dark matter halos indicate that the Milky Way contains numerous subhalos. When a dark matter subhalo passes in front of a star, the light from that star will be deflected by gravitational lensing,…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-19 Adrienne L. Erickcek , Nicholas M. Law

The Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model for galaxy formation predicts that a significant fraction of mass in the dark matter haloes that surround L L* galaxies is bound in substructures of mass 1E4-1E7Msun. The number of observable baryonic…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 Leonidas A. Moustakas , R. Benton Metcalf

We investigate how strong lensing of dusty, star-forming galaxies by foreground galaxies can be used as a probe of dark matter halo substructure. We find that spatially resolved spectroscopy of lensed sources allows dramatic improvements to…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-11 Yashar Hezaveh , Neal Dalal , Gilbert Holder , Michael Kuhlen , Daniel Marrone , Norman Murray , Joaquin Vieira

Precision analysis of galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lensing images provides a unique way of characterizing small-scale dark matter halos, and could allow us to uncover the fundamental properties of dark matter's constituents. Recently,…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2022-11-15 Noemi Anau Montel , Adam Coogan , Camila Correa , Konstantin Karchev , Christoph Weniger

Strong gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for probing the nature of dark matter, as lensing signals are sensitive to the dark matter substructure within the lensing galaxy. We present a comparative analysis of strong gravitational…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-29 Jack Lonergan , Andrew Benson , Daniel Gilman

In the standard structure formation scenario based on the cold dark matter paradigm, galactic halos are predicted to contain a large population of dark matter subhalos. While the most massive members of the subhalo population can appear as…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2016-08-10 Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine , Leonidas A. Moustakas , Charles R. Keeton , Kris Sigurdson , Daniel A. Gilman

Strong gravitational lensing offers a unique probe of dark matter (DM) on sub-galactic scales, where the abundance and distribution of low-mass halos are highly sensitive to the underlying properties of DM particles. In this work, we…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-10 Andreas Filipp , Yashar Hezaveh , Laurence Perreault-Levasseur , Daniel Gilman , LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration

Subhalos at subgalactic scales ($M\lesssim 10^7 M_\odot$ or $k\gtrsim 10^3 \,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$) are pristine test beds of dark matter (DM). However, they are too small, diffuse and dark to be visible, in any existing observations. In this…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2021-09-07 Han Gil Choi , Chanung Park , Sunghoon Jung

Characterising the population and internal structure of sub-galactic halos is critical for constraining the nature of dark matter. These halos can be detected near galaxies that act as strong gravitational lenses with extended arcs, as they…

Strong gravitational lensing provides a purely gravitational means to infer properties of dark matter halos and thereby constrain the particle nature of dark matter. Strong lenses sometimes appear as four lensed images of a background…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-08-20 Daniel Gilman , Simon Birrer , Anna Nierenberg , Maverick S. H. Oh