Related papers: Caustics of Compensated Spherical Lens Models
Lensing of the CMB by modes that are larger than the size of the survey dilates intrinsic scales in the temperature and polarization fields and coherently shifts their observed power spectra with respect to the ensemble or all-sky mean. The…
We investigate the possibility of lens mass determination for a caustic crossing microlensing event based on a space telescope observation. We demonstrate that the parallax due to the orbital motion of a space telescope causes a periodic…
The standard theory of weak gravitational lensing relies on the approximation that light beams are infinitesimal. Our recent work showed that the finite size of sources, and the associated light beams, can cause nonperturbative corrections…
The time delay between images of strongly gravitationally lensed quasars is an established cosmological probe. Its limitations, however, include uncertainties in the assumed mass distribution of the lens. We re-examine the methodology of a…
Residual errors in shear measurements, after corrections for instrument systematics and atmospheric effects, can impact cosmological parameters derived from weak lensing observations. Here we combine convergence maps from our suite of…
A beam of light, reflected at a planar interface, does not follow perfectly the ray optics prediction. Diffractive corrections lead to beam shifts; either the reflected beam is displaced (spatial shift) and/or travels in a different…
Compensated isocurvature perturbations (CIPs) are modes in which the baryon and dark matter density fluctuations cancel. They arise in the curvaton scenario as well as some models of baryogenesis. While they leave no observable effects on…
Strong lensing by an isolated spherically symmetric mass distribution is considered in presence of a positive cosmological constant. Deflection angles and time delay are computed and compared to the multiple image of the quasar SDSS…
The gravitational field of a galaxy can act as a lens and deflect the light emitted by a more distant object such as a quasar. Strong gravitational lensing causes multiple images of the same quasar to appear in the sky. Since the light in…
We describe a new approach for the determination of cosmological parameters using gravitational lensing systems with multiple arcs, exploiting the fact that a given cluster can produce multiple arcs from sources over a broad range in…
Observational cosmology is passing through a unique moment of grandeur with the amount of quality data growing fast. However, in order to better take advantage of this moment, data analysis tools have to keep up the pace. Understanding the…
We examine the ability of gravitational lens time delays to reveal complex structure in lens potentials. In Congdon, Keeton & Nordgren (2008), we predicted how the time delay between the bright pair of images in a "fold" lens scales with…
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…
The nature of dark matter and dark energy are among the central questions in cosmology. Strong gravitational lenses with multiple source planes provide a geometric probe of cosmology: the ratio of deflection angles at different redshifts…
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…
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…
This work studies interference patterns created by simple lens models (point mass, Chang-Refsdal, and binary lens) in the wave optics regime, primarily in the context of lensing of gravitational waves (GWs) in the LIGO band at frequencies…
The study of light lensed by cosmic matter has yielded much information about astrophysical questions. Observations are explained using geometrical optics following a ray-based description of light. After deflection the lensed light…
The light we observe from distant astrophysical objects including supernovae and quasars allows us to determine large distances in terms of a cosmological model. Despite the success of the standard cosmological model in fitting the data,…
We investigate the gravitational lens effect caused by a non-spherically distorted compact object. The non-spherical property of the gravitational potential is modeled by a quadrupole moment. Under the assumption that the quadrupole…