Related papers: Gravitational lensing as a probe of structure
Large scale imaging surveys will increase the number of galaxy-scale strong lensing candidates by maybe three orders of magnitudes beyond the number known today. Finding these rare objects will require picking them out of at least tens of…
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 gravitational lensing of high-redshift sources in a LCDM universe. We have performed a series of ray-tracing experiments, and selected a subsample of cases of strong lensing (multiple images, arcs, and Einstein rings). For each…
Dark matter caustics have specific density profiles and, therefore, precisely calculable gravitational lensing properties. We present a formalism which simplifies the relevant calculations, and apply it to four specific cases. In the first…
Strong gravitational lensing gives access to the total mass distribution of galaxies. It can unveil a great deal of information about the lenses dark matter content when combined with the study of the lenses light profile. However,…
Gravitational lenses are a unique new constraint on the structure of galaxies. We review the evidence that most lenses are early-type galaxies, the optical properties of the lens galaxies, the evidence against constant M/L models, recent…
Mass clumps in gravitational lens galaxies can perturb lensed images in characteristic ways. Strong lens flux ratios have been used to constrain the amount of dark matter substructure in lens galaxies, and various other observables have…
This Resource Letter provides a guide to a selection of the literature on gravitational lensing and its applications. Journal articles, books, popular articles, and websites are cited for the following topics: foundations of gravitational…
Recent rapid progress in time domain surveys makes it possible to detect various types of explosive transients in the Universe in large numbers, some of which will be gravitationally lensed into multiple images. Although a large number of…
When light from a distant source object, like a galaxy or a supernova, travels towards us, it is deflected by massive objects that lie on its path. When the mass density of the deflecting object exceeds a certain threshold, multiple, highly…
Weak gravitational lensing is considered to be one of the most powerful tools to study the mass and the mass distribution of galaxy clusters. However, weak lensing mass reconstructions are plagued by the so-called mass-sheet degeneracy--the…
We propose a new technique to directly measure the shapes of dark matter halos of galaxies using weak gravitational lensing. Extending the standard galaxy-galaxy lensing method, we show that the shape parameters of the mass distribution of…
We determine the angle of deflection of light by the gravitational field inside and outside a spherical body with a homogeneous mass density. We show that the largest deflections, which can be measured by weak gravitational lensing, are in…
Measuring dark matter substructure within galaxy cluster haloes is a fundamental probe of the Lambda-CDM model of structure formation. Gravitational lensing is a technique for measuring the total mass distribution which is independent of…
With today's millimeter and submillimeter instruments observers use gravitational lensing mostly as a tool to boost the sensitivity when observing distant objects. This is evident through the dominance of gravitationally lensed objects…
The study of dark matter substructure through strong gravitational lensing has shown enormous promise in probing the properties of dark matter on sub-galactic scales. This approach has already been used to place strong constraints on a wide…
We discuss strong gravitational lensing by multiple objects along any line of sight. The probability for strong gravitational lensing by more than one lens is small, but a number of strong lens systems in which more than one separate lens…
We study the gravitational lensing influence of a massive object in a dark matter halo, using a simple model of a point mass embedded in a spherical Navarro--Frenk--White halo. Building on the analysis of critical curves and caustics…
Whereas considerable effort has been afforded in understanding the properties of galaxies, a full physical picture, connecting their baryonic and dark-matter content, super-massive black holes, and (metric) theories of gravity, is still…
The basic equations and geometry of gravitational lensing are described, as well as the most important contexts in which it is observed in astronomy: strong lensing, weak lensing and microlensing.