Related papers: Probing dark matter distribution with gravitationa…
Weak gravitational lensing is a unique probe of the dark side of the universe: it provides a direct way to map the distribution of dark matter around galaxies, clusters of galaxies and on cosmological scales. Furthermore, the measurement of…
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…
Gravitational lensing has emerged as a powerful probe of the matter distribution on subgalactic scales, which itself may contain important clues about the fundamental origins and properties of dark matter. Broadly speaking, two different…
We present a joint gravitational lensing and stellar-dynamical analysis of 11 early-type galaxies (median deflector redshift $\zd=0.5$) from Strong Lenses in the Legacy Survey (SL2S). Using newly measured redshifts and stellar velocity…
We present the result of a comparison between the dark matter distribution inferred from weak gravitational lensing and the observed galaxy distribution to identify dark structures with a high dark matter-to-galaxy density ratio. To do…
We combine photometry and lens modeling to study the properties of 17 gravitational lens galaxies between z=0.1 and 1. Most of the lens galaxies are passively evolving early-type galaxies, with a few spirals. The colors, scale lengths, and…
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…
The centres of galaxies are powerful laboratories to test the current $\Lambda$CDM model for structure formation and evolution. While these sub-galactic scales can be directly investigated in the local Universe, it is observationally…
The Cold Dark Matter theory of gravitationally-driven hierarchical structure formation has earned its status as a paradigm by explaining the distribution of matter over large spans of cosmic distance and time. However, its central tenet,…
We propose a new approach for measuring the mass profile and shape of groups and clusters of galaxies, which uses lensing magnification of distant background galaxies. The main advantage of lensing magnification is that, unlike lensing…
While the direct detection of the dark-matter particle remains very challenging, the nature of dark matter could be possibly constrained by comparing the observed abundance and properties of small-scale sub-galactic mass structures with…
[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 last decade has shown a considerable development of gravitational lensing for cosmology because it probes the amount and the nature of dark matter, and provides information on the density parameter $\Omega$, the cosmological constant…
[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 analysis of optical images of galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lensing systems can provide important information about the distribution of dark matter at small scales. However, the modeling and statistical analysis of these images is…
We show how observations of multiply-imaged quasars at high redshift can be used as a probe of dark matter clumps (subhalos with masses ~ 10^9 solar masses) within the virialized extent of more massive lensing halos. A large abundance of…
We study the relative alignment of mass and light in a sample of 16 massive early-type galaxies at z=0.2-0.9 that act as strong gravitational lenses. The sample was identified from deep multi-band images obtained as part of the Canada…
Gravitational lensing has become one of the most interesting tools to study the mass distribution in the Universe. Since gravitational light deflection is independent of the nature and state of the matter, it is ideally suited to…
The magnification effect of gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of the distribution of matter in the universe, yet it is frequently overlooked due to the fact that its signal to noise is smaller than that of lensing shear. Because its…
We combine in a self-consistent way the constraints from both gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics to perform a detailed investigation of the internal mass distribution, amount of dark matter, and dynamical structure of the 16…