Related papers: Gravitational Lensing and Dark Structures
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…
To date, the study of high-magnification gravitational lensing effects of galaxy clusters has focused upon the grossly distorted, luminous arc-like features formed in massive, centrally condensed clusters. We investigate the formation of a…
Analysing the weak lensing distortions of the images of faint background galaxies provides a means to constrain the average mass distribution of cluster galaxies and potentially to test the extent of their dark matter haloes as a function…
Using an analytical model, we compute the distribution of image separations resulting from gravitational lensing of distant sources, for 7 COBE-normalized CDM models with various combinations of Omega_0 and lambda_0. Our model assumes that…
The positions of images produced by the gravitational lensing of background sources provide unique insight in to galaxy-lens mass distribution. However, even quad images of extended sources are not able to fully characterize the central…
Nearly singular isothermal mass distributions with small core radii are consistent with stellar dynamics, lens statistics, and lens models as a model for E/S0 galaxies. Models like the de Vaucouleurs model with a constant mass-to-light…
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 construct a sample of numerical models for clusters of galaxies and employ these to investigate their capability of imaging background sources into long arcs. Emphasis is laid on the statistics of these arcs. We study cross sections for…
The gravitational lensing of faint background galaxies by rich clusters is emerging as a very efficient method to constrain both the mass distribution of cluster of galaxies and probe the statistical properties of faint background galaxies.…
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 present an estimation of the expected number of arcs and arclets in a sample of nearby (z<0.1) clusters of galaxies, that takes into account the magnitude limit of the objects as well as seeing effects. We show that strong lensing…
I present an overview of strong and weak gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters. After briefly introducing the principles of gravitational lensing, I discuss the main lessons learned from lensing on the mass distribution in clusters and…
By directly probing mass distributions, gravitational lensing offers several new tests of the CDM paradigm. Lens statistics place upper limits on the dark matter content of elliptical galaxies. Galaxies built from CDM mass distributions are…
Despite consistent progress in numerical simulations, the observable properties of galaxy clusters are difficult to predict ab initio. It is therefore important to compare both theoretical and observational results to a direct measure of…
The long-standing issues of determination of the mass distribution and nature of the center of our Galaxy could be probed by a lensing experiment capable of testing the spatial and velocity distributions of stars nearby and beyond it. We…
Gravitational lensing is brightening of background objects due to deflection of light by foreground sources. Rich clusters of galaxies are very effective lenses because they are centrally concentrated. Such natural Gravitational Telescopes…
The distribution of mass on galaxy cluster scales is an important test of structure formation scenarios, providing constraints on the nature of dark matter itself. Several techniques have been used to probe the mass distributions of…
We present an axially symmetric formula to calculate the probability of finding gravitational arcs in galaxy clusters, being induced by their massive dark matter haloes, as a function of clusters redshifts and virial masses. The formula…
We propose a novel technique to refine the modelling of galaxy clusters mass distribution using gravitational lensing. The idea is to combine the strengths of both "parametric" and "non-parametric" methods to improve the quality of the fit.…
We consider small-scale spheroidal clusters of weakly interacting massive particles in our Galaxy as non-compact gravitational microlenses and predict the appearance of caustics in the plane of a lensed source. The crossing of these…