Related papers: Gravitational lensing and elliptical galaxies
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…
A method is developed to evaluate the magnifications of the images of galaxies with lensing potentials stratified on similar concentric ellipses. A simple contour integral is provided which enables the sums of the magnifications of even…
In this work we introduced a new proposal to study the gravitational lensing theory by spherical lenses, starting from its surface mass density $\Sigma(x)$ written in terms of a decreasing function $f$ of a dimensionless coordinate $x$ on…
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…
Weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies by foreground structures has proven to be a powerful tool to study the mass distribution in the universe. Nowadays, attention has shifted from clusters of galaxies to the statistical properties…
It is generally thought that galaxies are embedded in dark matter halos extending well beyond their luminous matter. The existence of these galactic halos is mainly derived from the larger than expected velocities of stars and gas in the…
In this essay we offer a comprehensible overview of the gravitational aether scenario. This is a possible extension of Einstein's theory of relativity to the quantum regime via an effective approach. Quantization of gravity usually faces…
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,…
Gravitationally-lensed quasars should be discovered as a by-product of large galaxy redshift surveys, being discovered spectroscopically when a low-redshift galaxy exhibits high-redshift quasar emission lines. The number of lenses expected…
Because of their simplicity, axisymmetric mass distributions are often used to model gravitational lenses. Since galaxies are usually observed to have elliptical light distributions, mass distributions with elliptical density contours offer…
Recent results from gravitational lensing are combined with new modeling of the stellar velocity distributions in nearby galaxies to probe the connection between the luminous and the dark matter in elliptical galaxies. From analysing a…
We examine whether a cosmologically significant distribution of dark galaxy group or cluster-sized objects can have an optical depth for multiple imaging of distant background sources which is comparable to that from known galaxies while at…
The time delay between images of strongly gravitationally lensed quasars is an established cosmological probe. Its limitations, however, include uncertainties in the assumed mass distribution of the lens. We re-examine the methodology of a…
The positions of images produced by the gravitational lensing of background sources provide unique insight in to galaxy-lens mass distribution. However, even quad images of extended sources are not able to fully characterize the central…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…
We describe a new approach for the determination of cosmological parameters using gravitational lensing systems with multiple arcs, exploiting the fact that a given cluster can produce multiple arcs from sources over a broad range in…
We study analytically a gravitational lens due to a deformed star, which is modeled by using a monopole and a quadrupole moment. Positions of the images are discussed for a source on the principal axis. We present explicit expressions for…
The last decade has seen an enormous increase of activity in the field of gravitational lensing, mainly driven by improvements of observational capabilities. I will review the basics of gravitational lens theory, just enough to understand…
Variability in gravitationally lensed quasars can be due to intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar or due to ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced variability can be…
Brane world cosmologies seem to provide an alternative explanation for the present accelerated stage of the Universe with no need to invoke either a cosmological constant or an exotic \emph{quintessence} component. In this paper we…