Related papers: The Current Status of CLASS
Current and future large astronomical surveys will yield multiparameter databases on millions or even billions of objects. The scientific exploitation of these will require powerful, robust, and automated classification tools tailored to…
Upcoming ground and space based observatories such as the DES, the LSST, the JDEM concepts and the SKA, promise to dramatically increase the size of strong gravitational lens samples. A significant fraction of the systems are expected to be…
The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is a polarization-sensitive telescope array located at an altitude of 5,200 m in the Chilean Atacama Desert and designed to measure the polarized Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) over…
The precision reached by current and forthcoming strong-lensing observations requires to accurately model various perturbations to the main deflector. Hitherto, theoretical models have been developed to account for either cosmological…
The use of time-delay gravitational lenses to examine the cosmological expansion introduces a new standard ruler with which to test theoretical models. The sample suitable for this kind of work now includes 12 lens systems, which have thus…
We present the lens mass model of the quadruply-imaged gravitationally lensed quasar WFI2033-4723, and perform a blind cosmographical analysis based on this system. Our analysis combines (1) time-delay measurements from 14 years of data…
Cosmological observations have in the past few years become an increasingly powerful method for determining parameters within the neutrino sector, such as the presence of sterile states and the mass of neutrinos. I review the current status…
Strong gravitational lensing of quasars has the potential to unlock the poorly understood physics of these fascinating objects, as well as serve as a probe of the lensing mass distribution and of cosmological parameters. In particular,…
We report the discovery of a new gravitational lens system from the CLASS survey. Radio observations with the VLA, the WSRT and MERLIN show that the radio source B0850+054 is comprised of two compact components with identical spectra, a…
The Chinese Space Station Optical Survey (CSS-OS) is a planned full sky survey operated by the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST). It can simultaneously perform the photometric imaging and spectroscopic slitless surveys, and will probe…
This article briefly summarizes the increasingly precise observational estimates of the cosmological parameters. After three years on the stump, the Lambda-CDM model is still the leading candidate. Although the Universe is expanding, our…
The recently unveiled deep-field images from the James Webb Space Telescope have renewed interest in what we can and cannot see of the universe. Answering these questions requires understanding the so-called "cosmological horizons" and the…
We review feasibility studies, technological developments and astrophysical prospects for Laue lenses devoted to hard X-/gamma-ray astronomy observations.
After exactly a century since the formulation of the general theory of relativity, the phenomenon of gravitational lensing is still an extremely powerful method for investigating in astrophysics and cosmology. Indeed, it is adopted to study…
The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the current state of the art in loop quantum cosmology for three sets of audiences: young researchers interested in entering this area; the quantum gravity community in general; and,…
Surveys with submillimetre telescopes are revealing large numbers of gravitationally lensed high-redshift sources. I describe how, in practice, these lensed systems could be simultaneously used to estimate the values of cosmological…
Weak gravitational lensing, the deflection of light by mass, is one of the best tools to constrain the growth of cosmic structure with time and reveal the nature of dark energy. I discuss the sources of systematic uncertainty in weak…
We present the current photometric dataset for the Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) Survey, including HST photometry from ACS, WFPC2, and NICMOS. These data have enabled the confirmation of an additional 15 grade `A' (certain) lens systems, bringing…
The long-standing problem of whether the cosmological constant affects directly the deflection of light caused by a gravitational lens is reconsidered. We use a new approach based on the Hawking quasilocal mass of a sphere grazed by light…
Many different families of mass models are used in modern applications of strong gravitational lensing. I review a wide range of popular models, with two points of emphasis: (1) a discussion of strategies for building models suited to a…