Related papers: The Importance of Einstein Rings
Strong gravitational lensing from black holes results in the formation of relativistic images, in particular, relativistic Einstein rings. For objects with event horizons, the radius of the unstable light ring (photon sphere) is the lowest…
We discuss the LensClean algorithm which for a given gravitational lens model fits a source brightness distribution to interferometric radio data in a similar way as standard Clean does in the unlensed case. The lens model parameters can…
We review the experimental evidence for Einstein's special and general relativity. A variety of high precision null experiments verify the weak equivalence principle and local Lorentz invariance, while gravitational redshift and other clock…
We investigate gravitational lensing in the context of the MOG modified theory of gravity. Using a formulation of the theory with no adjustable or fitted parameters, we present the MOG equations of motion for slow, nonrelativistic test…
We present a multi-wavelength study of the gravitational lens COSMOS J095930+023427 (z=0.89), together with the associated galaxy group located at $z\sim0.7$ along the line of sight and the lensed background galaxy. The source redshift is…
We report on a program to obtain HST observations of galaxy-mass gravitational lens systems at optical and infrared wavelengths. Here we discuss the properties of 10 two-image gravitational lens systems (Q0142-100=UM673, B0218+357,…
Aims. Falomo et al. (2005) discovered a disk-like galaxy at ~ 1.2 arcsec from the QSO Q0045-3337 by means of ESO VLT adaptive optics. They estimated a galaxy Einstein radius (for a point mass) of comparable size, thus pointing up the…
The possibility to use observations of lensed relativistic jets on very small angular scales to construct proper models of spiral lens galaxies and to independently determine the Hubble constant is considered. On the example of the system…
Using a singular isothermal sphere model for the matter distribution of foreground clusters of galaxies, we study the statistics of giant arcs in flat cosmologies with and without a cosmological constant. We find that the relative number of…
We study the image formation process with the solar gravitational lens (SGL) in the case of an extended, resolved source. An imaging telescope, modeled as a convex lens, is positioned within the image cylinder formed by the light received…
Context. Time delay lensing is a powerful tool to measure the Hubble constant $H_0$. In order to obtain an accurate estimate of $H_0$ from a sample of time delay strong lenses, however, it is necessary to have a very good knowledge of the…
The time delay in gravitational lenses can be used to derive the Hubble constant in a relatively simple way. The results of this method are less dependent on astrophysical assumptions than in many other methods. The most important…
We examine parameter degeneracies in Culetu, Bardeen and Hayward regular black holes across lensing, shadow and quasinormal mode regimes. Our analysis reveals that while Einstein ring data yield extremely loose constraints, with the…
We present HST observations of seven unusual objects from the HST ``snapshot survey'' of BL Lac objects, of which four are gravitational lens candidates. In three cases a double point sources is observed: 0033+595, with 1.58 arcsec…
The Einstein radius (ER) of a gravitational lens encodes information about decisive quantities such as halo mass, concentration, triaxiality, and orientation with respect to the observer. Thus, the largest Einstein radii can potentially be…
[Abridged] Many current and future astronomical surveys will rely on samples of strong gravitational lens systems to draw conclusions about galaxy mass distributions. We use a new strong lensing pipeline (presented in Paper I of this…
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…
[Abridged] We combine our measurements of the velocity dispersion and the surface brightness profile of the lens galaxy D in the system MG2016+112 (z=1.004) with constraints from gravitational lensing to study its internal mass…
The location of the images in a multiple-image gravitational lens system are strongly dependent on the orientation angle of the mass distribution. As such, we can use the location of the images and the photometric properties of the visible…
We report the serendipitous discovery of a quadruply-lensed source behind the z=0.095 edge-on disk galaxy 2MASXJ13170000-1405187, based on public imaging survey data from Pan-STARRS PS1 and the VISTA Hemisphere Survey. Follow-up imaging…