Related papers: Angular complexity in strong lens substructure det…
We discuss whether one should expect that multiply imaged QSOs can be understood with `simple' lens models which contain a handful of parameters. Whereas for many lens systems such simple mass models yield a remarkably good description of…
Most of the matter in the universe is not luminous and can be observed directly only through its gravitational effect. An emerging technique called weak gravitational lensing uses background galaxies to reveal the foreground dark matter…
Cosmological parameter constraints from observations of time-delay lenses are becoming increasingly precise. However, there may be significant bias and scatter in these measurements due to, among other things, the so-called mass-sheet…
We investigate how Einstein rings and magnified arcs are affected by small-mass dark-matter haloes placed along the line-of-sight to gravitational lens systems. By comparing the gravitational signature of line-of-sight haloes with that of…
We report on the results of a visual search for galaxy-scale strong gravitational lenses over 650 arcmin^2 of HST/ACS imaging in the DEEP2-EGS field. In addition to a previously-known Einstein Cross (the "Cross," HST J141735+52264, with…
Strong gravitational lensing offers a powerful probe of the detailed distribution of matter in lenses, while magnifying and bringing faint background sources into view. Observed strong lensing by massive galaxy clusters, which are often in…
We present a strong lensing modeling technique based on versatile basis sets for the lens and source planes. Our method uses high performance Monte Carlo algorithms, allows for an adaptive build up of complexity and bridges the gap between…
The morphology of galaxy clusters reflects the epoch at which they formed and hence depends on the value of the mean cosmological density, Omega. Recent studies have shown that the distribution of dark matter in clusters can be mapped from…
Strong lensing is one of the most direct probes of the mass distribution in the inner regions of galaxy clusters. It can be used to constrain the density profiles and to measure the mass of the lenses. Moreover, the abundance of strong…
When modelling strong gravitational lenses, i.e., where there are multiple images of the same source, the most widely used parameterisation for the mass profile in the lens galaxy is the singular power-law model $\rho(r)\propto…
Observations of the large-scale structure (LSS) implicitly assume an ideal FLRW observer with the ambient structure having no influence on the observer. However, due to correlations in the LSS, cosmological observables are dependent on the…
Strong gravitational lensing can detect the presence of low-mass haloes and subhaloes through their effect on the surface brightness of lensed arcs. We carry out an extended analysis of the density profiles and mass distributions of two…
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…
We study the intrinsic shape and alignment of isodensities of galaxy cluster halos extracted from the MultiDark MDR1 cosmological simulation. We find that the simulated halos, are extremely prolate on small scales, and increasingly…
Precise modelling of strong lensing systems can be affected by external mass distributions, e.g. the group or cluster within which the lens is embedded. In this article, we propose to turn this limitation to our advantage and to use precise…
Dark halo substructure may reveal itself through secondary, small-scale gravitational lensing effects on light sources that are macrolensed by a foreground galaxy. Here, we explore the prospects of using Very Long Baseline Interferometry…
The environments of deflectors in strong lensing systems affect our ability to test cosmological models and constrain evolutionary properties of galaxies. Here we measure the deflector scale (Einstein mass) and deflector environment (halo…
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…
We test the ability of strong lensing data to constrain the size of a central core in the dark matter halos of galaxy clusters, using Abell 611 as a prototype. Using simulated data, we show that modeling a cluster halo with ellipticity in…
We investigate the strong gravitational lensing phenomena caused by a black hole with a dark matter halo. In this study, we examine strong gravitational lensing with two significant dark matter models: the universal rotation curve model and…