Bayesian approach to gravitational lens model selection: constraining H_0 with a selected sample of strong lenses
Irène Balmès, Pier-Stefano Corasaniti
备注：
13 pages; 13 figures; includes Bayesian analysis of a synthetic lens catalog generated with GRAVLENS, several additional results; matches MNRAS accepted version
Bayesian model selection methods provide a self-consistent probabilistic framework to test the validity of competing scenarios given a set of data. We present a case study application to strong gravitational lens parametric models. Our goal is to select a homogeneous lens subsample suitable for cosmological parameter inference. To this end we apply a Bayes factor analysis to a synthetic catalog of 500 lenses with power-law potential and external shear. For simplicity we focus on double-image lenses (the largest fraction of lens in the simulated sample) and select a subsample for which astrometry and time-delays provide strong evidence for a simple power-law model description. Through a likelihood analysis we recover the input value of the Hubble constant to within 3σstatistical uncertainty. We apply this methodology to a sample of double image lensed quasars. In the case of B1600+434, SBS 1520+530 and SDSS J1650+4251 the Bayes' factor analysis favors a simple power-law model description with high statistical significance. Assuming a flat \LambdaCDM cosmology, the combined likelihood data analysis of such systems gives the Hubble constant H_0=76+15-5 km/s/Mpc having marginalized over the lens model parameters, the cosmic matter density and consistently propagated the observational errors on the angular position of the images. The next generation of cosmic structure surveys will provide larger lens datasets and the method described here can be particularly useful to select homogeneous lens subsamples adapted to perform unbiased cosmological parameter inference
Context. Time delay lensing is a powerful tool to measure the Hubble constant $H_0$. In order to obtain an accurate estimate of $H_0$ from a sample of time delay strong lenses, however, it is necessary to have a very good knowledge of the mass structure of the lens galaxies. Strong lensing data on their own are not sufficient to break the degeneracy between $H_0$ and the lens model parameters, on a single object basis. Aims. The goal of this study is to determine whether it is possible to break the $H_0$-lens structure degeneracy with the statistical combination of a large sample of time-delay…
As the number of detected gravitational wave sources increase with increasing sensitivity of the gravitational wave observatories, observing strongly lensed pair of events will become a real possibility. Lensed GW events will have very accurately measured time delays, as well as magnification ratios. If the corresponding lens system can be identified electromagnetically and the redshifts of the lens and the host galaxy can be measured, such events can be used to constrain important astrophysical parameters of the lens system. As most lensing events will have image separations that will be sign…
Many distant objects can only be detected, or become more scientifically valuable, if they have been highly magnified by strong gravitational lensing. We use EAGLE and BAHAMAS, two recent cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, to predict the probability distribution for both the lens mass and lens redshift when point sources are highly magnified by gravitational lensing. For sources at a redshift of two, we find the distribution of lens redshifts to be broad, peaking at z=0.6. The contribution of different lens masses is also fairly broad, with most high-magnification lensing due to lenses w…
COSMOGRAIL: the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses VIII. Deconvolution of high resolution near-IR images and simple mass models for 7 gravitationally lensed quasars
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archives constitute a rich dataset of high resolution images to mine for strong gravitational lenses. While many HST programs specifically target strong lenses, they can also be present by coincidence in other HST observations. We aim to identify non-targeted strong gravitational lenses in almost two decades of images from the ESA it Hubble Space Telescope archive (eHST), without any prior selection on the lens properties. We used crowdsourcing on the Hubble Asteroid Hunter (HAH) citizen science project to identify strong lenses, alongside asteroid trails, in p…
Strong gravitational lenses allow us to peer into the farthest reaches of space by bending the light from a background object around a massive object in the foreground. Unfortunately, these lenses are extremely rare, and manually finding them in astronomy surveys is difficult and time-consuming. We are thus tasked with finding them in an automated fashion with few if any, known lenses to form positive samples. To assist us with training, we can simulate realistic lenses within our survey images to form positive samples. Naively training a ResNet model with these simulated lenses results in a p…
Secure confirmation that a gravitational wave (GW) has been gravitationally lensed would bring together these two pillars of General Relativity for the first time. This breakthrough is challenging for many reasons, including: GW sky localization uncertainties dwarf the angular scale of gravitational lensing, the mass and structure of gravitational lenses is diverse, the mass function of stellar remnant compact objects is not yet well constrained, and GW detectors do not operate continuously. We introduce a new approach that is agnostic to the mass and structure of the lenses, compare the effic…
Gravitationally lensed quasars are useful for studying astrophysics and cosmology, and enlarging the sample size of lensed quasars is important for multiple studies. In this work, we develop a lens search algorithm for four-image (quad) lensed quasars based on their time variability. In the development of the lens search algorithm, we constructed a pipeline simulating multi-epoch images of lensed quasars in cadenced surveys, accounting for quasar variabilities, quasar hosts, lens galaxies, and the PSF variation. Applying the simulation pipeline to the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) transient survey, …
Similar to light, gravitational waves (GWs) can be lensed. Such lensing phenomena can magnify the waves, create multiple images observable as repeated events, and superpose several waveforms together, inducing potentially discernible patterns on the waves. In particular, when the lens is small, $\lesssim 10^5 M_\odot$, it can produce lensed images with time delays shorter than the typical gravitational-wave signal length that conspire together to form ``beating patterns''. We present a proof-of-principle study utilizing deep learning for identification of such a lensing signature. We bring the…
