Related papers: The Current Status of CLASS
After a brief introduction to gravitational lensing theory, a rough overview of the types of gravitational lensing statistics that have been performed so far will be given. I shall then concentrate on recent results of galaxy-galaxy…
Measurements of time delays between multiple quasar images produced by strong lensing are reaching a sensitivity that makes them a promising cosmological probe. Future surveys will provide significantly more measurements, reaching…
We present the optical spectra of four newly discovered gravitational lenses from the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS). These observations were carried out using the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph on the W. M. Keck-I Telescope as…
Weak gravitational lensing provides a unique method to map directly the distribution of dark matter in the universe and to measure cosmological parameters. This cosmic-shear technique is based on the measurement of the weak distortions that…
Technical description of the new project called All Sky Automated Survey and results of the tests of our prototype instrument are presented. The ultimate goal of this project is photometric monitoring of the large area of the sky with fully…
This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant. Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its…
We present a simultaneous analysis of 10 galaxy lenses having time-delay measurements. For each lens we derive a detailed free-form mass map, with uncertainties, and with the additional requirement of a shared value of the Hubble parameter…
The new frontier of cosmology will be led by three-dimensional surveys of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Based on its all-sky surveys and redshift depth, the SKA is destined to revolutionize cosmology, in combination with future…
The alignments between galaxies, their underlying matter structures, and the cosmic web constitute vital ingredients for a comprehensive understanding of gravity, the nature of matter, and structure formation in the Universe. We provide an…
We present the first galaxy scale lens catalog from the second Red-Sequence Cluster Survey. The catalog contains 60 lensing system candidates comprised of Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) lenses at 0.2 < z < 0.5 surrounded by blue arcs or apparent…
The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is an array of polarization-sensitive millimeter wave telescopes that observes ~70% of the sky at frequency bands centered near 40GHz, 90GHz, 150GHz, and 220GHz from the Atacama desert of…
While tested to a high level of accuracy in the Solar system, general relativity is under the spotlight of both theoreticians and observers on larger scales, mainly because of the need to introduce dark matter and dark energy in the…
(abridged) Gravitationally lensed quasars can be used as powerful cosmological and astrophysical probes. We can (i) infer the Hubble constant based on the time-delay technique, (ii) unveil substructures along the l.o.s. toward distant…
How is the universe organized on large scales? How did this structure evolve from the unknown initial conditions of a rather smooth early universe to the present time? The answers to these questions will shed light on the cosmology we live…
In the past decade, observational cosmology has had one of the most exciting periods in the past century. The precision with which we have been able to measure cosmological parameters has increased tremendously, while at the same time, we…
The Lenses Structure and Dynamics (LSD) Survey aims at measuring the luminous and dark matter distribution of high redshift early-type galaxies by combining gravitational lens analysis with newly determined velocity dispersion profiles.…
Much of the science case for the next generation of deep, wide-field optical/infrared surveys has been driven by the further study of dark energy. This is a laudable goal (and the subject of a companion white paper by Zhan et al.). However,…
Galaxy shapes are not randomly oriented, rather they are statistically aligned in a way that can depend on formation environment, history and galaxy type. Studying the alignment of galaxies can therefore deliver important information about…
Gravitational lensing time delays are well known to depend on cosmological parameters, but they also depend on the details of the mass distribution of the lens. It is usual to model the mass distribution and use time-delay observations to…
We present the first catalog of 67 strong galaxy-galaxy lens candidates discovered in the 1.64 square degree Hubble Space Telescope COSMOS survey. Twenty of these systems display multiple images or strongly curved large arcs. Our initial…