Related papers: The Chang-Refsdal Lens Revisited
Neglecting the second order corrections in weak lensing measurements can lead to a few percent uncertainties on cosmic shears, and becomes more important for cluster lensing mass reconstructions. Existing methods which claim to measure the…
Based on the standard gravitational lensing formalism with its effective, projected lensing potential in a given background cosmology, we investigate under which transformations of the source position and of the deflection angle the…
It has been conjectured (astro-ph/0103463) that a gravitational lens consisting of n point masses can not produce more than 5(n-1) images as is known to be the case for n = 2 and 3. The reasoning is based on the number of finite limit…
Image distortion due to weak gravitational lensing is examined using a non-perturbative method of integrating the geodesic deviation and optical scalar equations along the null geodesics connecting the observer to a distant source. The…
When the gravitational lensing potential can be approximated by that of circularly symmetric system affected by weak perturbations, it is found that the shape of the resulting (tangential) caustics is entirely specified by the local…
Most galaxies host central supermassive black holes. As two galaxies merge, the black holes also merge. The final single black hole may suffer a kick due to asymmetric gravitational radiation and may not be at the centre of the galaxy;…
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…
Multiple image gravitational lens systems, and especially quads are invaluable in determining the amount and distribution of mass in galaxies. This is usually done by mass modeling using parametric or free-form methods. An alternative way…
The strong galaxy-galaxy lensing produces highly magnified and distorted images of background galaxies in the form of arcs and Einstein rings. Statistically, these effects are quantified, for example, in the number counts of highly luminous…
We introduce a new method for constraining the redshift distribution of a set of galaxies, using weak gravitational lensing shear. Instead of using observed shears and redshifts to constrain cosmological parameters, we ask how well the…
We study the set of image tuples arising from fixed cameras observing varying planar 3-dimensional point configurations. We derive a formula for the number of complex critical points of the triangulation problem, which seeks to reconstruct…
Strong gravitational lensing images are subject to shape distortions due to inhomogeneities along the line of sight. The leading order shape distortion is shear, which, if measurable, will be a complementary cosmological probe to…
In weak gravitational lensing, the image distortion caused by shear measures the projected tidal gravitational field of the deflecting mass distribution. To lowest order, the shear is proportional to the mean image ellipticity. If the image…
We present a new perspective on gravitational lensing. We describe a new extension of the weak lensing formalism capable of describing strongly lensed images. By integrating the non-linear geodesic deviation equation, the amplification…
A long standing question in cosmology is whether gravitational lensing changes the distance-redshift relation $D(z)$ or the mean flux density of sources. Interest in this has been rekindled by recent studies in non-linear relativistic…
We perform a strong-lensing analysis of the merging galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 (M0416; z=0.42) in recent CLASH/HST observations. We identify 70 new multiple images and candidates of 23 background sources in the range 0.7<z_{phot}<6.14…
The inversion of a gravitational lens system is, as is well known, plagued by the so-called mass-sheet degeneracy: one can always rescale the density distribution of the lens and add a constant-density mass-sheet such that the, also…
The elegance and usefulness of a complex formulation of the basic lensing equations is demonstrated with a number of applications. Using standard tools of complex function theory, we present, for instance, a new proof of the fact that the…
Microlensing is a powerful tool for studying stellar atmospheres because as the source crosses regions of formally infinite magnification (caustics) the surfaceof the star is resolved, thereby allowing one to measure the radial intensity…
We use weak lensing data from the Hubble Space Telescope COSMOS survey to measure the second- and third-moments of the cosmic shear field, estimated from about 450,000 galaxies with average redshift <z> ~ 1.3. We measure two- and…