Related papers: External Shear in Quadruply Imaged Lens Systems
We present a study of the lens properties of quadruply imaged systems, lensed by numerically simulated galaxies. We investigate a simulated elliptical and disc galaxy drawn from high resolution simulations of galaxy formation in a…
While many strong gravitational lens galaxies are suspected to lie in groups or clusters of galaxies, environmental effects in lens models are often unconstrained and sometimes ignored. We show that this creates significant biases in a…
We present the results of weak gravitational lensing statistics in four different cosmological $N$-body simulations. The data has been generated using an algorithm for the three-dimensional shear, which makes use of a variable softening…
Flux ratio `anomalies' in quadruply-imaged gravitational lenses can be explained with galactic substructure of the sort predicted by CDM, but the strength and uniqueness of that hypothesis needs to be further assessed. A good way to do that…
Several gravitationally lensed quasars are observed with anomalous magnifications in pairs of images that straddle a critical curve. Simple theoretical arguments suggest that the magnification of these images should be approximately…
X-ray and optical observations of quadruply lensed quasars can provide a microarcsecond probe of the lensed quasar, corresponding to scale sizes of \~10^2-10^4 gravitational radii of the central black hole. This high angular resolution is…
Gravitational lensing of a background source by a foreground galaxy lens occasionally produces four images of the source. The cusp and the fold relations impose conditions on the ratios of magnifications of these four-image lenses. In this…
The intrinsic scatter in the ellipticities of galaxies about the mean shape, known as "shape noise," is the most important source of noise in weak lensing shear measurements. Several approaches to reducing shape noise have recently been put…
Gravitationally lensed systems with multiply imaged quasars are an excellent tool for studying the properties of distant galaxies. In particular, they provide the most accurate mass measures for the lensing galaxy. The system B1422+231 is a…
We investigate the expected correlation between the weak gravitational shear of distant galaxies and the orientation of foreground galaxies, through the use of numerical simulations. This shear-ellipticity correlation can mimic a…
We report a detection of the coherent distortion of faint galaxies arising from gravitational lensing by foreground structures. This ``cosmic shear'' is potentially the most direct measure of the mass power spectrum, as it is unaffected by…
Galactic sized gravitational lenses are simulated by combining a cosmological N-body simulation and models for the baryonic component of the galaxy. The lens caustics, critical curves, image locations and magnification ratios are calculated…
In strong gravitational lens systems, the light bending is usually dominated by one main galaxy, but may be affected by other mass along the line of sight (LOS). Shear and convergence can be used to approximate the contributions from less…
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…
When a gravitationally lensed source crosses a caustic, a pair of images is created or destroyed. We calculate the mean number of such pairs of micro-images $<n>$ for a given macro-image of a gravitationally lensed point source, due to…
We investigate the frequency of two- and four-image gravitational lens systems in the Jodrell-VLA Astrometric Survey (JVAS) and Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS), and the possible implications for dark matter halo properties. A simple…
While most strong-gravitational-lensing systems may be roughly modelled by a single massive object between the source and the observer, in the details all the structures near the light path contribute to the observed images. These…
We study the statistics of large-separation gravitational lens systems produced by non-spherical halos in the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model. Specifically, we examine how the triaxiality of CDM halos affects the overall lensing probabilities…
Dedicated 'Stage IV' observatories will soon observe the entire extragalactic sky, to measure the 'cosmic shear' distortion of galaxy shapes by weak gravitational lensing. To measure the apparent shapes of those galaxies, we present an…
We identify and study a previously unknown systematic effect on cosmic shear measurements, caused by the selection of galaxies used for shape measurement, in particular the rejection of close (blended) galaxy pairs. We use ray-tracing…