Related papers: LBQS 1429-0053: a binary quasar rather than a lens…

PKS 1413+135 is one of the most peculiar blazars known. Its strange properties led to the hypothesis almost four decades ago that it is gravitationally lensed by a mass concentration associated with an intervening galaxy. It exhibits…

High angular resolution images of the complex gravitational lens system RXS J1131-1231 (a quadruply imaged AGN with a bright Einstein ring) obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys and NICMOS instruments onboard the Hubble Space…

The third phase of the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS) has recently been completed, bringing the total number of sources imaged to over 15000 in the CLASS and JVAS combined survey. In the VLA observations carried out in March and April…

We report the discovery of a close quasar pair candidate at $z=5.66$, J2037--4537. J2037--4537 is resolved into two quasar images at the same redshift in ground-based observations. Followup spectroscopy shows significant differences in both…

The gravitational lens configuration where a background galaxy is closely aligned with a foreground galaxy, can provide accurate measurement of the dark matter density profile in the foreground galaxy, free of dynamical assumptions.…

We report observations of the z = 3.87 broad absorption line quasar APM 08279+5255 (Irwin et al. 1998) with the Adaptive Optics Bonnette (AOB) of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The object is found to be a double source. The separation…

(Abridged) We present our VLT/FORS1 deep spectroscopic observations of the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J0924+0219, as well as archival HST/NICMOS and ACS images of the same object. The two-epoch spectra, obtained in the Multi Object…

We present a multi-wavelength study of the gravitational lens COSMOS J095930+023427 (z=0.89), together with the associated galaxy group located at $z\sim0.7$ along the line of sight and the lensed background galaxy. The source redshift is…

Wide separation lensing statistics offer information about the density profile and abundance of dark halos. Recently a possible discovery of six quasar pairs, which may be lensed multiple images, was reported by Miller et al. (2003,…

Galaxies and their central supermassive black holes are known to coevolve, but the physical background for this is unknown as of yet. The High-$z$ Universe probed via Lensing by QSOs (HULQ) project aims to investigate this coevolution by…

We present new spectroscopic and polarimetric observations of the first discovered gravitational lens Q0957+561 obtained with the 6m telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO, Russia). We explore spectropolarimetric parameters…

We report the discovery of a cluster-scale lensed quasar, SDSS J1029+2623, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The lens system exhibits two lensed images of a quasar at z_s=2.197. The image separation of 22.5" makes it the largest…

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS and WFC3 observations of SDSS J1029+2623, a three-image quasar lens system produced by a foreground cluster at z=0.584. Our strong lensing analysis reveals 6 additional multiply imaged galaxies.…

Substructure in distant gravitational lens galaxies can be detected because it alters the brightnesses and shapes of the lensed images. The optical and radio flux ratios in the four-image lens B1422+231 imply that there is a \sim 10^4-10^7…

We search for strongly lensed and multiply imaged gravitational wave signals in the second observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (O2). We exploit a new source of information, the so-called Morse phase, which further mitigates…

Optical and near-IR Hubble Space Telescope and Gemini-North adaptive optics images, further improved through deconvolution, are used to explore the gravitationally lensed radio source PKS 1830-211. The line of sight to the quasar at z=2.507…

The tight correlations found between masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and the luminosities, total stellar masses, and velocity dispersions of their host galaxies are often interpreted as a sign of their co-evolution. Studying…

Strong gravitational lensing provides a powerful probe of the physical properties of quasars and their host galaxies. A high fraction of the most luminous high-redshift quasars was predicted to be lensed due to magnification bias. However,…

The physics and demographics of type 2 quasars remain poorly understood, and new samples of such objects selected in a variety of ways can give insight into their physical properties, evolution, and relationship to their host galaxies. We…

Quasars acting as strong gravitational lenses offer a rare opportunity to probe the redshift evolution of scaling relations between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies, particularly the $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$--$M_{\mathrm{host}}$…