Related papers: The Current Status of CLASS
Gravitational lenses can provide crucial information on the geometry of the Universe, on the cosmological scenario of formation of its structures as well as on the history of its components with look-back time. In this review, I focus on…
The current status of neutrino cosmology is reviewed, from the question of neutrino decoupling and the presence of sterile neutrinos to the effects of neutrinos on the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure. Particular…
Strong gravitational lens systems with time delays between the multiple images allow measurements of time-delay distances, which are primarily sensitive to the Hubble constant that is key to probing dark energy, neutrino physics, and the…
In this manuscript of the habilitation \`a diriger des recherches (HDR), the author presents some of his work over the last ten years. The main topic of this thesis is cosmic shear, the distortion of images of distant galaxies due to weak…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys measure the distortion of the image of distant sources due to the deflections of light rays by the fluctuations of the gravitational potential along the line of sight. Since they probe the non-linear…
In this talk I review some of the key questions that weak lensing observations of clusters can potentially answer, and sketch the progress that has been made to date in extracting quantitative estimates of masses and density profiles. A…
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…
I review the observations of gravitationally lensed quasars. These systems are important because they allow us to probe the properties of the lensing galaxies at various scales, and they also allow insights into the structures of the…
We describe a series of new applications of gravitational lenses as astrophysical and cosmological tools. Such applications are becoming possible thanks to advances in the quality and quantity of observations. CASTLES…
Recent all-sky and large-area astronomical surveys and their catalogued data over the whole range of electromagnetic spectrum are reviewed, from Gamma-ray to radio, such as Fermi-GLAST and INTEGRAL in Gamma-ray, ROSAT, XMM and Chandra in…
This paper gives an introduction to some of the statistical physics problems which appear in the study of structural glasses. It is a shortened and updated version of a more detailed review paper which has appeared in cond-mat/0005173.
We present limits on the cosmological constant from the statistics of gravitational lenses using newly completed quasar surveys, new lens data, and a range of lens models. The formal limit is $\lambda_0 < 0.66$ at 95\% confidence in flat…
The time delays between the multiple images of a strong lens system, together with a model of the lens mass distribution, allow a one-step measurement of a cosmological distance, namely, the "time-delay distance" of the lens (D_dt) that…
We present the discovery of CLASS B0739+366, a new gravitational lens system from the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey. Radio imaging of the source with the Very Large Array (VLA) shows two compact components separated by $0\farcs54$, with a flux…
We have a well-established standard model for cosmology and prospects for considerable additions from work in progress. I offer a list of elements of the standard model, comments on controversies in the interpretation of the evidence in…
Strong lensing by an isolated spherically symmetric mass distribution is considered in presence of a positive cosmological constant. Deflection angles and time delay are computed and compared to the multiple image of the quasar SDSS…
In the search for the nature of dark energy most cosmological probes measure simple functions of the expansion rate. While powerful, these all involve roughly the same dependence on the dark energy equation of state parameters, with…
The current standard model of cosmology successfully describes a variety of measurements, but the nature of its main ingredients, dark matter and dark energy, remains unknown. Euclid is a medium-class mission in the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025…
The time delay between the arrival of photons of multiple images of time variable sources can be used to constrain absolute distances in the Universe (Refsdal 1964), and in turn obtain a direct estimate of the Hubble constant and other…
This is a written version of a series of lectures aimed at undergraduate students in astrophysics/particle theory/particle experiment. We summarize the important progress made in recent years towards understanding high energy astrophysical…