Related papers: Elliptical multipoles for gravitational lenses
The stellar velocity fields of elliptical galaxies hold clues to their dynamical structure and origin. The construction of velocity field models is greatly simplified by assuming an approximate geometrical form for the streamlines of the…
We demonstrate that the flux ratios of 4-image lensed quasars provide a powerful means of probing the small scale structure of Dark Matter (DM) halos. A family of smooth lens models can precisely predict certain combinations of flux ratios…
Wave effects in lensing form a rich phenomenon at the intersection of classical caustic singularities and quantum interference, yet are notoriously difficult to model. A large number of recently observed pulsars and fast radio bursts in…
Microlensing of extragalactic sources, in particular the probability of significant amplifications, is a potentially powerful probe of the abundance of compact objects outside the halo of the Milky Way. Accurate experimental constraints…
The lensing cross section of triaxial halos depends on the relative orientation between a halo's principal axes and its line of sight. Consequently, a lensing subsample of randomly oriented halos is not, in general,randomly oriented. Using…
A growing body of observational evidence suggests that the luminosity, photometric shape and amount of rotational or anisotropical support in elliptical galaxies may provide vital clues to how they formed. Elliptical galaxies appear to fall…
We study glass behavior in a mixture of elliptic and circular particles in two dimensions at low temperatures using an orientation-dependent Lennard-Jones potential. The ellipses have a mild aspect ratio ($\sim 1.2$) and tend to align at…
Many multiply--imaged quasars have been found over the years, but none so far with image separation in excess of $8\arcsec$. The absence of such large splittings has been used as a test of cosmological models: the standard Cold Dark Matter…
The statistics of gravitationally lensed arcs was recognised earlier as a potentially powerful cosmological probe. However, while fully numerical models find orders of magnitude difference between the arc probabilities in different…
We use a new non-parametric gravitational modelling tool -- \Glass{} -- to determine what quality of data (strong lensing, stellar kinematics, and/or stellar masses) are required to measure the circularly averaged mass profile of a lens and…
We consider microlensing of an elliptical source crossing a fold caustic. We derive a simple expression for the light curve of a source with uniform surface brightness that is accurate to third order in the ellipticity e (yielding errors of…
We explore the halo structure of four gravitational lenses with well-observed, thin Einstein rings. We find that the gravitational potentials are well described by ellipsoidal density distributions in the sense that the best-fit…
We estimate the impact of weak lensing by strongly nonlinear cosmological structures on the cosmic microwave background. Accurate calculation of large $\ell$ multipoles requires N-body simulations and ray-tracing schemes with both high…
Flux-ratio anomalies in quadruply imaged quasars are sensitive to the imprint of low-mass dark-matter haloes. The reliability of detection depends on the robustness of the smooth mass model. Optical surveys show that massive early-type…
It has recently been argued that the observed ellipticities of galaxies may be determined at least in part by the primordial tidal gravitational field in which the galaxy formed. Long-range correlations in the tidal field could thus lead to…
The topic of this paper is a generalisation of the linear model for intrinsic alignments of galaxies to intrinsic flexions: In this model, third moments of the brightness distribution reflect distortions of elliptical galaxies caused by…
We investigate the gravitational radiation emitted by an isolated system for gravity theories with Lagrange density $f(R) = R + aR^2$. As a formal result we obtain leading order corrections to the quadrupole formula in General Relativity.…
Microlensing of extended stellar sources in the LMC and Galaxy by low mass lenses can produce variable polarisation. The characteristics of the polarisation and flux profiles can provide considerable information about the lens geometry, and…
Gravitational and plasma lensing share the same mathematical formalism in the limit of geometrical optics. Both phenomena can be effectively described by a projected, two-dimensional deflection potential whose gradient causes an…
In this paper we derive an exact full expression for the 2D probability distribution of the ellipticity of an object measured from data, only assuming Gaussian noise in pixel values. This is a generalisation of the probability distribution…