We present weak lensing mass estimates of seven shear-selected galaxy cluster candidates from the Deep Lens Survey. The clusters were previously identified as mass peaks in convergence maps of 8.6 sq. deg of R band imaging, and followed up with X-ray and spectroscopic confirmation, spanning a redshift range 0.19 - 0.68. Most clusters contained multiple X-ray peaks, yielding 17 total mass concentrations. In this paper, we constrain the masses of these X-ray sources with weak lensing, using photometric redshifts from the full set of BVRz' imaging to properly weight background galaxies according to their lensing distance ratios. We fit both NFW and singular isothermal sphere profiles, and find that the results are insensitive to the assumed profile. We also show that the results do not depend significantly on the assumed prior on the position of the mass peak, but that this may become an issue in future larger samples. The inferred velocity dispersions for the extended X-ray sources range from 250-800 km/s, with the exception of one source for which no lensing signal was found. This work further establishes shear selection as a viable technique for finding clusters, but also highlights some unresolved issues such as determination of the mass profile center without biasing the mass estimate, and fully accounting for line-of-sight projections. A follow-up paper will examine the mass-X-ray scaling relations of these clusters.
Yes! Upcoming galaxy shear surveys have the potential to significantly improve our understanding of dark energy and neutrino mass if lensing systematics can be sufficiently controlled. The cross-correlations between the weak lensing shear, galaxy number counts from a galaxy redshift survey, and the CMB lensing convergence can be used to calibrate the shear multiplicative bias, one of the most challenging systematics in lensing surveys. These cross-correlations can significantly reduce the deleterious effects of the uncertainties in multiplicative bias.
We study lensing by voids in Cubic Galileon and Nonlocal gravity cosmologies, which are examples of theories of gravity that modify the lensing potential. We find voids in the dark matter and halo density fields of N-body simulations and compute their lensing signal analytically from the void density profiles, which we show are well fit by a simple analytical formula. In the Cubic Galileon model, the modifications to gravity inside voids are not screened and they approximately double the size of the lensing effects compared to GR. The difference is largely determined by the direct effects of t…
The cross correlation between the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect and gravitational lensing in wide field has recently been measured. It can be used to probe the distribution of the diffuse gas in large scale structure, as well as inform us about the missing baryons. As for any lensing-based quantity, higher order lensing effects can potentially affect the signal. Here, we extend previous higher order lensing calculations to the case of tSZ-lensing cross correlations. We derive terms analogous to corrections due to the Born approximation, lens-lens coupling, and reduced shear up to four…
We derive radial mass profiles of four strong lensing selected clusters which show prominent giant arcs (Abell 1703, SDSS J1446+3032, SDSS J1531+3414, and SDSS J2111-0115), by combining detailed strong lens modeling with weak lensing shear measured from deep Subaru Suprime-cam images. Weak lensing signals are detected at high significance for all four clusters, whose redshifts range from z=0.28 to 0.64. We demonstrate that adding strong lensing information with known arc redshifts significantly improves constraints on the mass density profile, compared to those obtained from weak lensing alone…
Strong gravitational lensing provides unique opportunities to investigate the mass distribution at the cores of galaxy clusters and to study high redshift galaxies. Using $94$ strong lensing models of $74$ cluster fields from the \textit{Hubble} Frontier Fields (HFF), Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS), and Sloan Giant Arcs Survey (SGAS), modeled with three parametric approaches, we evaluate the lensing strength of each cluster (area with $|μ|\geq3$ for $z_s=9$). We assess how large scale mass, projected inner core mass, and the inner slope of the projected mass density profile relat…
Weak gravitational lensing of background galaxies is a unique, direct probe of the distribution of matter in clusters of galaxies. We review several important aspects of cluster weak gravitational lensing together with recent advances in weak lensing techniques for measuring cluster lensing profiles and constraining cluster structure parameters.
We introduce a new estimator of the CMB lensing power spectrum, together with its likelihood, based on iterative lensing reconstruction. Despite the increased complexity of the lensing maps, this estimator shares similarities with the standard quadratic estimator. Most importantly, it is unbiased towards the assumptions done on the noise and cosmology for the lensing reconstruction. This new spectrum estimator can double the constraints on the lensing amplitude compared to the quadratic estimator, while keeping numerical cost under control and being robust to errors.
We present the optimal convergence and shear estimators for lensing reconstruction from the cosmic microwave background temperature field. This generalizes the deflection estimator, is sensitive to non-lensing modes, provides internal consistency checks, and is always at least as optimal. Previously, these estimators were only known in the squeezed limit. This paper decomposes convergence and shear fields into cosine and sine waves and the lensed correlation function is then Taylor expanded in the wave amplitudes. Maximizing the likelihood function gives the optimal estimators for the converge…
We introduce the Generalised Lensing and Shear Spectra GLaSS code which is available for download from https://github.com/astro-informatics/GLaSS It is a fast and flexible public code, written in Python, that computes generalized spherical cosmic shear spectra. The commonly used tomographic and spherical Bessel lensing spectra come as built-in run-mode options. GLaSS is integrated into the Cosmosis modular cosmological pipeline package. We outline several computational choices that accelerate the computation of cosmic shear power spectra. Using GLaSS, we test whether the assumption that using …
We infer gravitational lensing shear and convergence fields from galaxy ellipticity catalogs under a spatial process prior for the lensing potential. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithm with simulated Gaussian-distributed cosmological lensing shear maps and a reconstruction of the mass distribution of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 781 using galaxy ellipticities measured with the Deep Lens Survey. Given interim posterior samples of lensing shear or convergence fields on the sky, we describe an algorithm to infer cosmological parameters via lens field marginalization. In the most …
The weak lensing effect on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) induces distortions in spatial pattern of CMB anisotropies, and statistical properties of CMB anisotropies become a weakly non-Gaussian field. We first summarize the weak lensing effect on the CMB (CMB lensing) in the presence of scalar, vector and tensor perturbations. Then we focus on the lensing effect on CMB statistics and methods to estimate deflection angles and their power spectrum. We end by summarizing recent observational progress and future prospect.
Dark matter halos represent the highest density peaks in the matter distribution. Conversely, cosmic voids are under-dense patches of the universe. Probing the mass distribution of the universe requires various approaches, including weak gravitational lensing that subtly modifies the shape of distant sources, and Doppler lensing that changes the apparent size and magnitude of objects due to peculiar velocities. In this work, we adopt both gravitational and Doppler lensing effects to study the underlying matter distribution in and around cosmic voids/halos. We use the relativistic $N$-body code…
In this Letter, we report the observational constraints on the Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ theory derived from weak lensing peak abundances, which are closely related to the mass function of massive halos. In comparison with studies using optical or x-ray clusters of galaxies, weak lensing peak analyses have the advantages of not relying on mass-baryonic observable calibrations. With observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope Lensing Survey, our peak analyses give rise to a tight constraint on the model parameter $|f_{R0}|$ for $n=1$. The $95\%$ CL limit is $\log_{10}|f_{R0}| < -4.82$ given WM…
An incomplete sky coverage poses difficulties in the extraction of the weak lensing information from the CMB. We test the reconstruction of the weak lensing convergence from CMB maps to which masks of point sources have been applied. We use the quadratic estimator with a kernel with finite support acting in real space for a Planck simulation. We recover the lensing signal without significant loss of power or addition of spurious correlations, thus showing that masking defected pixels does not affect the reconstruction of the weak lensing convergence in real space.
Cosmic voids are an important probe of large-scale structure that can constrain cosmological parameters and test cosmological models. We present a new paradigm for void studies: void detection in weak lensing convergence maps. This approach identifies objects that relate directly to our theoretical understanding of voids as underdensities in the total matter field and presents several advantages compared to the customary method of finding voids in the galaxy distribution. We exemplify this approach by identifying voids using the weak lensing peaks as tracers of the large-scale structure. We fi…
We study weak gravitational lensing by the cosmic large-scale structure of the 21-cm radiation background in the 3d-weak lensing formalism. The interplay between source distance measured at finite resolution, visibility and lensing terms is analysed in detail and the resulting total covariance $C_{\ell}(k,k')$ is derived. The effect of lensing correlates different multipoles through convolution, breaking the statistical homogeneity of the 21-cm radiation background. This homogeneity breaking can be exploited to reconstruct the lensing field $\hatϕ_{\ell m}(κ)$ and noise lensing reconstruction …
We discuss the gravitational lensing of gravitational wave signals from coalescing binaries. We delineate the regime where wave effects are significant from the regime where geometric limit can be used. Further, we focus on the effect of micro-lensing and the combined effect of strong lensing and micro-lensing. We find that micro-lensing combined with strong lensing can introduce time varying phase shift in the signal and hence can lead to detectable differences in the signal observed for different images produced by strong lensing. This, coupled with the coarse localization of signal source i…
Cosmic shear can only be measured where there are galaxies. This source-lens clustering (SLC) effect has two sources, intrinsic source clustering and cosmic magnification (magnification/size bias). Lensing tomography can suppress the former. However, this reduction is limited by the existence of photo-z error and nonzero redshift bin width. Furthermore, SLC induced by cosmic magnification cannot be reduced by lensing tomography. Through N-body simulations, we quantify the impact of SLC on the lensing power spectrum in the context of lensing tomography. We consider both the standard estimator a…
We demonstrate a method for reconstructing the weak lensing potential from the Lyman-$α$ forest data. We derive an optimal estimator for the lensing potential on the sky based on the correlation between pixels in real space. This method effectively deals with irregularly spaced data, holes in the survey, missing data and inhomogeneous noise. We demonstrate an implementation of the method with simulated spectra and weak lensing. It is shown that with a source density of $>\sim 0.5$ per square arcminutes and $\sim 200$ pixels in each spectrum ($λ/ Δλ= 1300$) the lensing potential can be reconstr…
Only galaxies bright enough and large enough to be unambiguously identified and measured are included in galaxy surveys used to estimate cosmic shear. We demonstrate that because gravitational lensing can scatter galaxies across the brightness and size thresholds, cosmic shear experiments suffer from lensing bias. We calculate the effect on the shear power spectrum and show that - unless corrected for - it will lead analysts to cosmological parameters estimates that are biased at the 2-3σlevel in DETF Stage III experiments, such as the Dark Energy Survey.
We present weak lensing mass estimates for a sample of 458 galaxy clusters from the redMaPPer Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR8 catalogue using Hyper Suprime-Cam weak lensing data. We develop a method to quickly estimate cluster masses from weak lensing shear and use this method to estimate weak lensing masses for each of the galaxy clusters in our sample. Subsequently, we constrain the mass-richness relation as well as the intrinsic scatter between the cluster richness and the measured weak lensing masses. When calculating the mass-richness relation for all clusters with a richness $λ>20$, we find…
We study how joint shear and magnification measurements improve the statistical precision of weak lensing mass calibration experiments, relative to standard shear-only analysis. For our magnification measurements, we consider not only the impact of lensing on the source density of galaxies, but also the apparent increase in source sizes. The combination of all three lensing probes - density, size, and shear - can improve the statistical precision of mass estimates by as much as 40% - 50%. This number is insensitive to survey assumptions, though it depends on the degree of knowledge of the para…
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 has never been rigorously tested. In this paper, we discuss this issue, and point out that if we use discrete density profile to model the lens galaxy, then the position of the images does not change, but the magnification will be increased. Strongly lensed gravitational waves could test this conclusion in the future.
We investigate the accuracy of weak lensing simulations by comparing the results of five independently developed lensing simulation codes run on the same input $N$-body simulation. Our comparison focuses on the lensing convergence maps produced by the codes, and in particular on the corresponding PDFs, power spectra and peak counts. We find that the convergence power spectra of the lensing codes agree to $\lesssim 2\%$ out to scales $\ell \approx 4000$. For lensing peak counts, the agreement is better than $5\%$ for peaks with signal-to-noise $\lesssim 6$. We also discuss the systematic errors…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) represents a unique source for the study of gravitational lensing. It is extended across the entire sky, partially polarized, located at the extreme distance of z=1100, and is thought to have the simple, underlying statistics of a Gaussian random field. Here we review the weak lensing of the CMB, highlighting the aspects which differentiate it from the weak lensing of other sources, such as galaxies. We discuss the statistics of the lensing deflection field which remaps the CMB, and the corresponding effect on the power spectra. We then focus on methods fo…
Precise reconstruction of the cosmic microwave background lensing potential can be achieved with deep polarization surveys by iteratively removing lensing-induced $B$ modes. We introduce a lensing spectrum estimator and its likelihood for such optimal iterative reconstruction. Our modelling share similarities to the state-of-the-art likelihoods for quadratic estimator-based (QE) lensing reconstruction. In particular, we generalize the $N_L^{(0)}$ and $N_L^{(1)}$ lensing biases, and design a realization-dependent spectrum debiaser, making this estimator robust to uncertainties in the data model…
We constrain properties of cluster haloes by performing likelihood analysis using lensing shear and flexion data. We test our analysis using two mock cluster haloes: an isothermal ellipsoid (SIE) model and a more realistic elliptical Navarro-Frenk-White (eNFW) model. For both haloes, we find that flexion is more sensitive to the halo ellipticity than shear. The introduction of flexion information significantly improves the constraints on halo ellipticity, orientation and mass. We also point out that there is a degeneracy between the mass and the ellipticity of SIE models in the lensing signal.
We identify new strong lensing clusters of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS DR8) by visually inspecting color images of a large sample of clusters of galaxies. We find 68 new clusters showing giant arcs in addition to 30 known lensing systems. Among 68 cases, 13 clusters are "almost certain" lensing systems with tangential giant arcs, 22 clusters are "probable" and 31 clusters are "possible" lensing systems. We also find two exotic systems with blue rings. The giant arcs have angular separations of 2.0"-25.7" from the bright central galaxies. We note that the rich clusters …
According to the theory of general relativity, masses deflect light in a way similar to convex glass lenses. This gravitational lensing effect is astigmatic, giving rise to image distortions. These distortions allow to quantify cosmic structures statistically on a broad range of scales, and to map the spatial distribution of dark and visible matter. We summarise the theory of weak gravitational lensing and review applications to galaxies, galaxy clusters and larger-scale structures in the Universe.
As the first paper in a series on the study of the galaxy-galaxy lensing from Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7), we present our image processing pipeline that corrects the systematics primarily introduced by the Point Spread Function (PSF). Using this pipeline, we processed SDSS DR7 imaging data in $r$ band and generated a background galaxy catalog containing the shape information of each galaxy. Based on our own shape measurements of the galaxy images from SDSS DR7, we extract the galaxy-galaxy (GG) lensing signals around foreground spectroscopic galaxies binned in different …
The measurement of cosmic shear using weak gravitational lensing is a challenging task that involves a number of complicated procedures. We study in detail the systematic errors in the measurement of weak lensing Minkowski Functionals (MFs). Specifically, we focus on systematics associated with galaxy shape measurements, photometric redshift errors, and shear calibration correction. We first generate mock weak-lensing catalogs that directly incorporate the actual observational characteristics of the Canada-France-Hawaii Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS). We then perform a Fisher analysis using the lar…
To take full advantage of the unprecedented power of upcoming weak lensing surveys, understanding the noise, such as cosmic variance and geometry/mask effects, is as important as understanding the signal itself. Accurately quantifying the noise requires a large number of statistically independent mocks for a variety of cosmologies. This is impractical for weak lensing simulations, which are costly for simultaneous requirements of large box size (to cover a significant fraction of the past light cone) and high resolution (to robustly probe the small scale where most lensing signal resides). The…
It is usually assumed that the ellipticity power spectrum measured in weak lensing observations can be expressed as an integral over the underlying matter power spectrum. This is true at second order in the gravitational potential. We extend the standard calculation, constructing all corrections to fourth order in the gravitational potential. There are four types of corrections: corrections to the lensing shear due to multiple-deflections; corrections due to the fact that shape distortions probe the reduced shear $γ/(1-κ)$ rather than the shear itself; corrections associated with the non-linea…
We determine the concentration-mass relation of 19 X-ray selected galaxy clusters from the CLASH survey in theories of gravity that directly modify the lensing potential. We model the clusters as NFW haloes and fit their lensing signal, in the Cubic Galileon and Nonlocal gravity models, to the lensing convergence profiles of the clusters. We discuss a number of important issues that need to be taken into account, associated with the use of nonparametric and parametric lensing methods, as well as assumptions about the background cosmology. Our results show that the concentration and mass estima…
The presence of mass inhomogeneities along the line of sight of propagation of light fromdistant objects can induce deflection in the flight path of the photon. This phenomenon is called as gravitational lensing. Lensing can have both distortion (shear) and isotropic magnification effects on the source. We studied the effect of lensing magnification on supernova (SN) Ia in this thesis. Presence of lensing would introduce a source of contamination to the brightness distribution of the source (SN Ia in our case). Thus it also enables one to compute the lensing effect indirectly from the Hubble d…
Cross-correlations between galaxy weak lensing (WL) and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lensing are a powerful tool to probe matter fluctuations at intermediate redshifts and to detect residual systematics in either probe. In this paper, we study the cross-correlation of galaxy WL from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC) first data release and CMB lensing from the final Planck data release, for HSC source galaxies at 0.3< z < 1.5. HSC is the deepest Stage-III galaxy WL survey, and provides both a great opportunity to study the high-redshift universe and new challenges relate…
We report a mass reconstruction of A1689 using Particle Based Lensing (PBL), a new technique for Strong+Weak lensing that allows a variable resolution depending on the data density and the signal-to-noise. Using PBL we also calculate the covariance matrix for the resulting mass map. The reconstruction of A1689 shows a secondary mass peak in the north-east direction confirming previous optical observations. This indicates that the central region of the cluster is still undergoing a weak merger. We have used this mass map to measure power ratios of the dark matter distribution and compared it to…
Our work is based on the stacked weak-lensing analysis of a sample of 80 strong-lensing galaxy groups. Our main results are the following: (i) the lensing signal does not allow us to firmly reject a simple singular isothermal sphere mass distribution compared to the expected NFW mass profile; (ii) we obtain an average concentration $c_{200}=8.6_{-1.3}^{+2.1}$ that is much higher than the expected value from numerical simulations for the corresponding average mass $M_{200}=0.73_{-0.10}^{+0.11}\times10^{14}\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$; (iii) the combination of our results with those at larger mass scales…
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 matrix of weak lensing is generalised to a sum over independent amplification tensors of increasing rank. We show how an image distorted by a generic lens may be constructed as a sum over `roulettes', which are the natural curves associated with the independent spin modes of the amplification tensors. Highly distorted images can be constructed even for large sou…
Shear fields due to weak gravitational lensing have characteristic coherent patterns. We describe the topological defects in shear fields in terms of the curvature of the surface described by the lensing potential. A simple interpretation of the characteristic defects is given in terms of the the umbilical points of the potential surface produced by ellipsoidal halos. We show simulated lensing shear maps and point out the typical defect configurations. Finally, we show how statistical properties such as the abundance of defects can be expressed in terms of the correlation function of the lensi…
Gravitational and plasma lensing share the same mathematical formalism in the limit of geometrical optics. Both phenomena can be effectively described by a projected, two-dimensional deflection potential whose gradient causes an instantaneous light deflection in a single, thin lens plane. We highlight the differences in the time-delay and lensing equations that occur because plasma lensing is caused by a potential directly proportional to the deflecting electron number density and gravitational lensing is caused by a potential related to the deflecting mass density by a Poisson equation. Since…
We present a light-traces-mass (LTM) strong-lensing model of the massive lensing cluster MACS J2135.2-0102 ($z$=0.33; hereafter MACS2135), known in part for hosting the Cosmic Eye galaxy lens. MACS2135 is also known to multiply-lens a $z=$2.3 sub-mm galaxy near the Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG), as well as a prominent, triply-imaged system at a large radius of $\sim$37" south of the BCG. We use the latest available Hubble imaging to construct an accurate lensing model for this cluster, identifying six new multiply-imaged systems with the guidance of our LTM method, so that we have roughly qua…
Gravitationally lensed curved arcs provide a wealth of information about the underlying lensing distortions. Extracting precise lensing information from extended sources is a key component in many studies aiming to answer fundamental questions about the Universe. To maintain accuracy with increased precision, it is of vital importance to characterize and understand the impact of degeneracies inherent in lensing observables. In this work, we present a formalism to describe the gravitational lensing distortion effects resulting in curved extended arcs based on the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of…
Plasma lensing is the refraction of low-frequency electromagnetic rays due to cold free electrons in the universe. For sources at a cosmological distance, there is observational evidence of elongated, complex plasma structures along the line of sight requiring a multi-lens-plane description. To investigate the limits of single-plane plasma lensing, we set up a double-plane lens with a projected Gaussian electron density in each lens plane. We compare double-plane scenarios with corresponding effective single-plane configurations. Our results show how double-plane lenses can be distinguished fr…
Cross correlation with thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect in cosmic microwave background observation and weak gravitational lensing effect in galaxy imaging survey opens a new window on constraining matter contents in the Universe at redshift less than 1. In this paper, we study the impact of radio sources and cosmic infrared background (CIB) on observed tSZ-lensing correlation. Assuming the best-fit model of CIB by the Planck satellite, we estimate that the residual correlation of CIB with large-scale structures will be of an order of $2\%$ of expected tSZ-lensing correlation from intrac…
We show that the so-called "post-Born" effects of weak lensing at 4th order are equivalent to lens-lens couplings in the Born Approximation. We demonstrate this by explicitly showing the equivalence of the canonical weak lensing approach at 4th order using the anisotropy remapping method, to that of the 4th order calculation of the lens-lens coupling effects using the Boltzmann equation approach that was first developed in [Phys. Rev. D89, 123006]. Furthermore, we argue that to incorporate true "post-Born" effects, i.e. taking into account non-straight photon paths, require the addition of a p…
Weak gravitational lensing leaves a characteristic imprint on the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization angular power spectra. Here we investigate the possible constraints on the integrated lensing potential from future CMB angular spectra measurements expected from Planck and EPIC. We find that Planck and EPIC will constrain the amplitude of the integrated projected potential responsible for lensing at 6% and 1% level, respectively with very little sensitivity to the shape of the lensing potential. We discuss the implications of such a measurement in constraining dark energ…
The accuracy of mass estimates by gravitational lensing using the thin-lens approximation applied to Navarro-Frenk-White mass models with a soft truncation mechanism recently proposed by Baltz, Marshall and Oguri is studied. The gravitational lens scenario considered is the case of the inference of lens mass from the observation of Einstein rings (strong lensing). It is found that the mass error incurred by the simplifying assumption of thin lenses is below 0.5%. As a byproduct, the optimal tidal radius of the soft truncation mechanism is found to be at most 10 times the virial radius of the m…
To recognize gravitational wave lensing events and being able to differentiate between similar lens models will be of crucial importance once one will be observing several lensing events of gravitational waves per year. In this work, we study the lensing of gravitational waves in the context of LISA sources and wave-optics regime. While different papers before ours studied microlensing effects enhanced by simultaneous strong lensing, we focus on frequency (time) dependent phase effects produced by one lens that will be visible with only one lensed image. We will show how, in the interference r…
For lensing galaxies we introduce a formal velocity dispersion sigma_lens, based on enclosed mass and the virial theorem. This is calculated from an ensemble of pixelated lens models, and found to be fairly model independent. A sample of 18 well-known early-type lensing galaxies and two clusters is found to be consistent with the equality of sigma_lens and the kinematic velocity dispersion sigma_obs. Both the early-type lensing galaxies and the clusters can thus be determined as being virialized. In a second step we calculate the I-band luminosity and the total mass content for the sample of l…
Current sky surveys have been conducted very accurately in order to understand our universe. One of the phenomena survey maps provide is gravitational effect. Albert Einstein (1936) first discussed the possibilities of gravitational lensing effects based on his theory of general relativity, which might give us some information about cosmology. We often categorize the effects by micro, weak, and strong lensing types. This paper focuses on the strong gravitational lensing, especially the double-source plane lens systems. It was recently recognized that the double lensing events can provide us wi…
We compute time delays for gravitational lensing in a flat LambdaCDM Swiss cheese universe. We assume a primary and secondary pair of light rays are deflected by a single point mass condensation described by a Kottler metric (Schwarzschild with Lambda) embedded in an otherwise homogeneous cosmology. We find that the cosmological constant's effect on the difference in arrival times is non-linear and at most around 0.002% for a large cluster lens; however, we find differences from time delays predicted by conventional linear lensing theory that can reach ~4% for these large lenses. The differenc…
In this work we present a lensing study of Compact Groups (CGs) using data obtained from the high quality Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey. Using stacking techniques we obtain the average density contrast profile. We analyse the lensing signal dependence on the groups surface brightness and morphological content, for CGs in the redshift range $z = 0.2 - 0.4$. We obtain a larger lensing signal for CGs with higher surface brightness, probably due to their lower contamination by interlopers. Also, we find a strong dependence of the lensing signal on the group concentration paramete…
Numerical studies on the imaging and caustic properties of the singular isothermal sphere (SIS) under a wide range of external shear (from 0.0 to 2.0) are presented. Using a direct inverse-mapping formula for this lens system (Lee 2003), we investigate various lensing properties under both a low (i.e., γ < 1.0), and a high (i.e., γ > 1.0) shear case: image separations, total or individual magnifications, flux ratios of 2-images, maximum number of images, and lensing cross-sections. We systematically analyze the effective lensing cross-sections of double-lensing and quad-lensing systems based o…
In this article, we present an overview of the new developments in problems of the plasma influence on the effects of gravitational lensing, complemented by pieces of new material and relevant discussions. Deflection of light in the presence of gravity and plasma is determined by a complex combination of various physical phenomena: gravity, dispersion, refraction. In particular, the gravitational deflection itself, in a homogeneous plasma without refraction, differs from the vacuum one and depends on the frequency of the photon. In an inhomogeneous plasma, chromatic refraction also takes place…
The weak lensing of cosmic web filaments is investigated in modified gravity (MOG) and it is demonstrated that the detected galaxies and baryonic gas of order $5-15 \%$ in filaments can with the enhanced value of the strength of gravity agree with the lensing data for filaments without dark matter.
