Related papers: The Importance of Lens Galaxy Environments
Galaxy lenses are frequently modeled as an elliptical mass distribution with external shear and isothermal spheres to account for secondary and line-of-sight galaxies. There is statistical evidence that some fraction of observed quads are…
Strong gravitational lensing provides an independent measurement of the Hubble parameter ($H_0$). One remaining systematic is a bias from the additional mass due to a galaxy group at the lens redshift or along the sightline. We quantify…
Strong gravitational lensing offers constraints on the Hubble constant that are independent of other methods. However, those constraints are subject to uncertainties in lens models. Previous studies suggest that using an elliptical power…
Matter near a gravitational lens galaxy or projected along the line of sight (LOS) can affect strong lensing observables by more than contemporary measurement errors. We simulate lens fields with realistic three-dimensional mass…
We predict how the observed variations in galaxy populations with environment affect the number and properties of gravitational lenses in different environments. Two trends dominate: lensing strongly favors early-type galaxies, which tend…
Using measured tangential shear profiles and number counts of massive elliptical galaxies, the halo occupation distribution of strong lensing galaxies is constrained. The resulting HOD is then used to populate an N-body simulation with lens…
Cosmological parameter constraints from observations of time-delay lenses are becoming increasingly precise. However, there may be significant bias and scatter in these measurements due to, among other things, the so-called mass-sheet…
Using new photometric and spectroscopic data in the fields of nine strong gravitational lenses that lie in galaxy groups, we analyze the effects of both the local group environment and line-of-sight galaxies on the lens potential. We use…
The lensing cross section of triaxial halos depends on the relative orientation between a halo's principal axes and its line of sight. Consequently, a lensing subsample of randomly oriented halos is not, in general,randomly oriented. Using…
Time delays between lensed multiple images have been known to provide an interesting probe of the Hubble constant, but such application is often limited by degeneracies with the shape of lens potentials. We propose a new statistical…
The elliptical power-law (EPL) model of the mass in a galaxy is widely used in strong gravitational lensing analyses. However, the distribution of mass in real galaxies is more complex. We quantify the biases due to this model mismatch by…
Cluster lensing has become an important tool in the search for high redshift galaxies through its ability to magnify sources. In order to determine the intrinsic properties of these galaxies, lensing mass models must be constructed to…
The Hubble constant can be constrained using the time delays between multiple images of gravitationally lensed sources. In some notable cases, typical lensing analyses assuming isothermal galaxy density profiles produce low values for the…
While the Hubble constant can be derived from observable time delays between images of lensed quasars, the result is often highly sensitive to assumptions and systematic uncertainties in the lensing model. Unlike most previous authors we…
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…
For the quadruple gravitational lens PG 1115+080, we combine recent measurements of the time delays with new lens models to determine the Hubble constant H_0. We explore the effects of systematic uncertainties in the lens models on the…
Recent analyses show that $\Lambda$CDM-based models optimised to reproduce the clustering of massive galaxies overestimate their gravitational lensing by about 30\%, the so-called lensing is low problem. Using a state-of-the-art…
Many strong gravitational lenses lie in complex environments, such as poor groups of galaxies, that significantly bias conclusions from lens analyses. We are undertaking a photometric survey of all known galaxy-mass strong lenses to…
Among the 100 strong lens candidates found in the COSMOS field, 20 with redshifts in the range [0.34,1.13], feature multiple images of background sources. Using the multi-wavelength coverage of the field and its spectroscopic follow-up, we…
Gravitational lensing offers a competitive method to measure $H_0$ with the goal of 1% precision. A major obstacle comes in the form of lensing degeneracies, such as the mass sheet degeneracy (MSD), which make it possible for a family of…