Related papers: Using Quadruple Lenses to probe the Structure of t…
Weak gravitational lensing seeks to determine shear by measuring induced quadrupole (elliptical) shapes in background galaxy images. Small impact parameter (a few kpc) gravitational lensing by foreground core masses between 2 10^{9} and 2…
Strong lensing is a powerful tool to address three major astrophysical issues: understanding the spatial distribution of mass at kpc and sub-kpc scale, where baryons and dark matter interact to shape galaxies as we see them; determining the…
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…
The redshift distribution of galaxy lenses in known gravitational lens systems provides a powerful test that can potentially discriminate amongst cosmological models. However, applications of this elegant test have been curtailed by two…
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…
The possibility of using lensed relativistic jets on very small angular scales to construct proper models of spiral lens galaxies and to independently determine the Hubble constant is considered. The system B0218+357 is used as an example…
Massive structures, such as galaxies, act as strong gravitational lenses on background sources. When the background source is a quasar, several lensed images are seen, as magnified or de-magnified versions of the same object. The detailed…
A method is developed to evaluate the magnifications of the images of galaxies with lensing potentials stratified on similar concentric ellipses. A simple contour integral is provided which enables the sums of the magnifications of even…
Infrared images of the Q 0957+561 gravitational lens obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope show two large (\sim 5 arcsec) lensed images of the z_s=1.41 quasar host galaxy. Parts of the host galaxy are doubly-imaged like the quasar, while…
We propose a method for recovering the two-dimensional gravitational potential of galaxy clusters which combines data from weak and strong gravitational lensing. A first estimate of the potential from weak lensing is improved at the…
We investigate gravitational lens models for the quadruply-lensed Cloverleaf BAL QSO H1413+1143 based on the HST WFPC/WFPC2 astrometric and photometric data of the system by Turnshek et al. and the HST NICMOS-2 data by Falco et al. The…
High resolution MERLIN observations of a newly-discovered four-image gravitational lens system, B0128+437, are presented. The system was found after a careful re-analysis of the entire CLASS dataset. The MERLIN observations resolve four…
Strong gravitational lensing is an important tool to probe the universe. In the theoretical analysis of gravitational lensing, it is assumed that continuous density profile can correctly describe the lens galaxy. But in fact this assumption…
Gravitational lensing allows us to probe the structure of matter on a broad range of astronomical scales, and as light from a distant source traverses an intervening galaxy, compact matter such as planets, stars, and black holes act as…
We present a new method of studying quadruple lenses in elliptical power-law potentials parameterized by $\psi(x,y) \propto (x^2+y^2/q^2)^{\beta/2}/\beta (0 \leq \beta < 2)$. For this potential, the moments of the four image positions…
Weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies by foreground structures has proven to be a powerful tool to study the mass distribution in the universe. Nowadays, attention has shifted from clusters of galaxies to the statistical properties…
Gravitational lensing provides a unique and powerful probe of the mass distributions of distant galaxies. Four-image lens systems with fold and cusp configurations have two or three bright images near a critical point. Within the framework…
We present a numerical method to estimate the lensing parameters and the Hubble constant H_0 from quadruply imaged gravitational lens systems. The lens galaxy is modeled using both separable deflection potentials and constant mass-to-light…
While many strong gravitational lens galaxies are suspected to lie in groups or clusters of galaxies, environmental effects in lens models are often unconstrained and sometimes ignored. We show that this creates significant biases in a…
Galaxy-scale strong lensing is a powerful tool in Astrophysics and Cosmology, enabling studies of massive galaxies' internal structure, their formation and evolution, stellar initial mass function, and cosmological parameters. In this…