Related papers: The CASTLES gravitational lensing tool
One of the main objectives of the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS) collaboration has been to find gravitational lens (GL) systems at radio wavelengths that are suitable for the determination of time delays between image pairs. The survey…
Gravitational lensing has developed into one of the most powerful tools for the analysis of the dark universe. This review summarises the theory of gravitational lensing, its main current applications and representative results achieved so…
The theory of General Relativity predicts that, since massive bodies curve spacetime, light from a distant source would be deflected by a foreground massive object -- a phenomenon known as \emph{Gravitational Lensing}. Historically, the…
Gravitational Lensing is a UNIQUE tool to constrain the mass distribution of collapsed structures, this is particularly true for galaxies, either on a case by case basis using multiple images of background sources (such as quasars), or…
We present results from a systematic search for strong gravitational lenses in the GOODS ACS data. The search technique involves creating a sample of likely lensing galaxies, which we define as massive early-type galaxies in a redshift…
Dark matter is an important ingredient of galaxies, as was recognised early on by Ken Freeman himself! Evidence for dark matter halos is still indirect, based on analysing motions of tracers such as gas and stars. In a sense the visible…
Gravitational lensing provides a means to measure mass that does not rely on detecting and analysing light from the lens itself. Compact objects are ideal gravitational lenses, because they have relatively large masses and are dim. In this…
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…
We summarise the current status of our project to identify and study z~6-10 galaxies thanks to strong gravitational lensing. Building on the detailed work from Richard et al. (2006), we present results from new follow-up observations…
Galaxy-scale strong gravitational lenses with measured stellar velocity dispersions allow a test of the weak-field metric on kiloparsec scales and a geometric measurement of the cosmological distance-redshift relation, provided that the…
Gravitational lenses are presently playing an important role in astrophysics. By means of these lenses the parameters of the deflector such as its mass, ellipticity, etc. and Hubble's constant can be determined. Using C, Xforms, Mesa and…
Whereas considerable effort has been afforded in understanding the properties of galaxies, a full physical picture, connecting their baryonic and dark-matter content, super-massive black holes, and (metric) theories of gravity, is still…
Large scale imaging surveys will increase the number of galaxy-scale strong lensing candidates by maybe three orders of magnitudes beyond the number known today. Finding these rare objects will require picking them out of at least tens of…
Strong gravitational lenses provide unique laboratories for cosmological and astrophysical investigations, but they must first be discovered - a task that can be met with significant contamination by other astrophysical objects and…
We report on the first results of an imaging survey to detect strong gravitational lensing targeting the richest clusters selected from the photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with follow-up deep imaging observations…
The GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2008 (GREAT08) Challenge focuses on a problem that is of crucial importance for future observations in cosmology. The shapes of distant galaxies can be used to determine the properties of dark…
With a primary goal of conducting precision weak lensing measurements from space, the COSMOS survey has imaged the largest contiguous area observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to date using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).…
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.…
Context: The number of known strong gravitational lenses is expected to grow substantially in the next few years. The statistical combination of large samples of lenses has the potential of providing strong constraints on the inner…
We present the on-going observational program of a VIMOS Integral Field Unit survey of the central regions of massive, gravitational lensing galaxy clusters at redshift z~0.2. We have observed six clusters using the low-resolution blue…