Related papers: Small-Scale Structure, Missing Galaxies and Gravit…
Measuring the distribution of mass on galaxy cluster scales is a crucial test of the Lambda CDM model, providing constraints on the nature of dark matter. Recent work investigating mass distributions of individual galaxy clusters using…
The amplification caused by gravitational light bending by compact objects in a foreground galaxy can affect the apparent number density of background QSOs, as well as their distribution in the fields of galactic halos. In this work we…
I elaborate on my prediction that an indirect detection of cold dark matter (CDM) may be possible by observing the gravitational lensing effects of the CDM cusp caustics at cosmological distances. Cusps in the distribution of CDM are…
Multiply-imaged quasar lenses can be used to constrain the substructure mass fraction in galaxy-sized dark matter halos via anomalous flux ratios in lensed images. The flux ratios, however, can be affected by both the substructure in the…
The gravitational lensing properties of cosmological halos depend upon the mass distribution within each halo. The description of halos as nonsingular, truncated isothermal spheres, a particular solution of the isothermal Lane- Emden…
Gravitational microlensing is a unique probe of the stellar content in strong lens galaxies. Flux ratio anomalies from gravitationally lensed supernovae (glSNe), just like lensed quasars, can be used to constrain the stellar mass fractions…
Weak gravitational lensing has become an important tool to study the properties of dark matter halos around galaxies, thanks to the advent of large panoramic cameras on 4m class telescopes. This area of research has been developing rapidly…
We use weak gravitational lensing to measure mean mass profiles around Locally Brightest Galaxies (LBGs). These are selected from the SDSS/DR7 spectroscopic and photometric catalogues to be brighter than any neighbour projected within 1.0…
It is generally thought that galaxies are embedded in dark matter halos extending well beyond their luminous matter. The existence of these galactic halos is mainly derived from the larger than expected velocities of stars and gas in the…
A long-standing problem in astrophysics is to measure the mass associated with galaxies. Gravitational lensing provides one of the cleanest ways to make this measurement. To date, the most powerful lensing probes of galactic mass have been…
Lensing flux-ratio anomalies have been frequently observed and taken as evidence for the presence of abundant dark matter substructures in lensing galaxies, as predicted by the cold dark matter (CDM) model of cosmogony. In previous work, we…
We present an analysis of seven strongly gravitationally lensed quasars and the corresponding constraints on the properties of dark matter. Our results are derived by modelling the lensed image positions and flux-ratios using a combination…
If dark matter in the form of compact objects comprises a large fraction of the mass of the universe, then gravitational lensing effects on gamma-ray bursts are expected. We utilize BATSE and Ulysses data to search for lenses of different…
The $\Lambda$CDM paradigm successfully explains the large-scale structure of the Universe, but is less well constrained on sub-galactic scales. Gravitational lens modelling has been used to measure the imprints of dark substructures on…
The observables in a strong gravitational lens are usually just the image positions and sometimes the flux ratios. We develop a new and simple algorithm which allows a set of models to be fitted exactly to the observations. Taking our cue…
Weak gravitational lensing observations probe the spectrum and evolution of density fluctuations and the cosmological parameters which govern them but are currently limited to small fields and subject to selection biases. We show how the…
Gravitational lensing can amplify the apparent brightness of distant sources. Images that are highly magnified are often part of multiply-imaged systems, but we consider the possibility of having large magnifications without additional…
In the CDM scenario, dark matter halos are assembled hierarchically from smaller subunits. A long-standing problem with this picture is that the number of sub-halos predicted by CDM simulations is orders of magnitudes higher than the known…
We present a detailed strong lensing analysis of an HST/ACS legacy dataset for the first gravitational lens, Q0957+561. With deep imaging we identify 24 new strongly lensed features, which we use to constrain mass models. We model the…
We have studied the mass distribution in the lensing galaxy 2237+0305 using constraints from both gravitational lensing and photometric and spectroscopic observations. We find that with sufficient dynamical information we can constrain the…