scholarly journals Lens galaxies in the Illustris simulation: power-law models and the bias of the Hubble constant from time delays

2015 ◽  
Vol 456 (1) ◽  
pp. 739-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dandan Xu ◽  
Dominique Sluse ◽  
Peter Schneider ◽  
Volker Springel ◽  
Mark Vogelsberger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Time Delays ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Lens Galaxies

scholarly journals Systematic errors induced by the elliptical power-law model in galaxy-galaxy strong lens modeling

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyue Cao ◽  
Ran Li ◽  
James Nightingale ◽  
Richard Massey ◽  
Andrew Robertson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Gravitational Lensing ◽  
Time Delays ◽  
Hubble Space Telescope ◽  
Stellar Dynamics ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Power Law Model ◽  
Mass Model ◽  
Mass Distributions ◽  
Model Mismatch

Abstract The elliptical power-law (EPL) mass model of the mass in a galaxy is widely used in strong gravitational lensing analyses. However, the distribution of mass in real galaxies is more complex. We quantify the biases due to this model mismatch by simulating and then analysing mock {\it Hubble Space Telescope} imaging of lenses with mass distributions inferred from SDSS-MaNGA stellar dynamics data. We find accurate recovery of source galaxy morphology, except for a slight tendency to infer sources to be more compact than their true size. The Einstein radius of the lens is also robustly recovered with 0.1\% accuracy, as is the global density slope, with 2.5\% relative systematic error, compared to the 3.4\% intrinsic dispersion. However, asymmetry in real lenses also leads to a spurious fitted `external shear' with typical strength, $\gamma_{\rm ext}=0.015$. Furthermore, time delays inferred from lens modelling without measurements of stellar dynamics are typically underestimated by $\sim$5\%. Using such measurements from a sub-sample of 37 lenses would bias measurements of the Hubble constant $H_0$ by $\sim$9\%. The next generation cosmography must use more complex lens mass models.

scholarly journals Overconstrained gravitational lens models and the Hubble constant

2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (2) ◽  
pp. 1725-1735 ◽  
Author(s):  
C S Kochanek
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Time Delays ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Gravitational Lens ◽  
Dark Matter Halo ◽  
Power Law Model ◽  
Dimensionless Quantity ◽  
Mean Convergence ◽  
The Mean

ABSTRACT It is well known that measurements of H0 from gravitational lens time delays scale as H0 ∝ 1 − κE, where κE is the mean convergence at the Einstein radius RE but that all available lens data other than the delays provide no direct constraints on κE. The properties of the radial mass distribution constrained by lens data are RE and the dimensionless quantity ξ = REα″(RE)/(1 − κE), where α″(RE) is the second derivative of the deflection profile at RE. Lens models with too few degrees of freedom, like power-law models with densities ρ ∝ r−n, have a one-to-one correspondence between ξ and κE (for a power-law model, ξ = 2(n − 2) and κE = (3 − n)/2 = (2 − ξ)/4). This means that highly constrained lens models with few parameters quickly lead to very precise but inaccurate estimates of κE and hence H0. Based on experiments with a broad range of plausible dark matter halo models, it is unlikely that any current estimates of H0 from gravitational lens time delays are more accurate than ${\sim} 10{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$, regardless of the reported precision.

scholarly journals Galaxy mass profiles from strong lensing III: The two-dimensional broken power-law model

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
C M O’Riordan ◽  
S J Warren ◽  
D J Mortlock
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Surface Density ◽  
Time Delays ◽  
Deflection Angle ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Gravitational Lenses ◽  
Power Law Model ◽  
Multiple Images ◽  
Mass Profile

Abstract When modelling strong gravitational lenses, i.e., where there are multiple images of the same source, the most widely used parameterisation for the mass profile in the lens galaxy is the singular power-law model ρ(r)∝r−γ. This model may be insufficiently flexible for very accurate work, for example measuring the Hubble constant based on time delays between multiple images. Here we derive the lensing properties – deflection angle, shear, and magnification – of a more adaptable model where the projected mass surface density is parameterised as a continuous two-dimensional broken power-law (2DBPL). This elliptical 2DBPL model is characterised by power-law slopes t1, t2 either side of the break radius θB. The key to the 2DBPL model is the derivation of the lensing properties of the truncated power law (TPL) model, where the surface density is a power law out to the truncation radius θT and zero beyond. This TPL model is also useful by itself. We create mock observations of lensing by a TPL profile where the images form outside the truncation radius, so there is no mass in the annulus covered by the images. We then show that the slope of the profile interior to the images may be accurately recovered for lenses of moderate ellipticity. This demonstrates that the widely-held notion that lensing measures the slope of the mass profile in the annulus of the images, and is insensitive to the mass distribution at radii interior to the images, is incorrect.

scholarly journals Ambiguities in gravitational lens models: impact on time delays of the source position transformation

2018 ◽  
Vol 617 ◽  
pp. A140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Wertz ◽  
Bastian Orthen ◽  
Peter Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Time Delay ◽  
Time Delays ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Companion Paper ◽  
Gravitational Lens ◽  
Source Position ◽  
Double Image ◽  
Validity Criterion ◽  
Mass Profile ◽  
Image Pairs

The central ambition of the modern time delay cosmography consists in determining the Hubble constant H0 with a competitive precision. However, the tension with H0 obtained from the Planck satellite for a spatially flat ΛCDM cosmology suggests that systematic errors may have been underestimated. The most critical of these errors probably comes from the degeneracy existing between lens models that was first formalized by the well-known mass-sheet transformation (MST). In this paper, we assess to what extent the source position transformation (SPT), a more general invariance transformation which contains the MST as a special case, may affect the time delays predicted by a model. To this aim, we have used pySPT, a new open-source python package fully dedicated to the SPT that we present in a companion paper. For axisymmetric lenses, we find that the time delay ratios between a model and its SPT-modified counterpart simply scale like the corresponding source position ratios, Δtˆ/Δt ≈ βˆ/β, regardless of the mass profile and the isotropic SPT. Similar behavior (almost) holds for nonaxisymmetric lenses in the double image regime and for opposite image pairs in the quadruple image regime. In the latter regime, we also confirm that the time delay ratios are not conserved. In addition to the MST effects, the SPT-modified time delays deviate in general no more than a few percent for particular image pairs, suggesting that its impact on time delay cosmography seems not be as crucial as initially suspected. We also reflected upon the relevance of the SPT validity criterion and present arguments suggesting that it should be reconsidered. Even though a new validity criterion would affect the time delays in a different way, we expect from numerical simulations that our conclusions will remain unchanged.

scholarly journals TDCOSMO

2020 ◽  
Vol 642 ◽  
pp. A194 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Gilman ◽  
S. Birrer ◽  
T. Treu
Keyword(s):  
Dark Matter ◽  
Time Delay ◽  
Time Delays ◽  
Arrival Time ◽  
Cosmological Parameters ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Line Of Sight ◽  
Gravitational Lenses ◽  
Additional Source ◽  
Precision Limit

Time delay cosmography uses the arrival time delays between images in strong gravitational lenses to measure cosmological parameters, in particular the Hubble constant H0. The lens models used in time delay cosmography omit dark matter subhalos and line-of-sight halos because their effects are assumed to be negligible. We explicitly quantify this assumption by analyzing mock lens systems that include full populations of dark matter subhalos and line-of-sight halos, applying the same modeling assumptions used in the literature to infer H0. We base the mock lenses on six quadruply imaged quasars that have delivered measurements of the Hubble constant, and quantify the additional uncertainties and/or bias on a lens-by-lens basis. We show that omitting dark substructure does not bias inferences of H0. However, perturbations from substructure contribute an additional source of random uncertainty in the inferred value of H0 that scales as the square root of the lensing volume divided by the longest time delay. This additional source of uncertainty, for which we provide a fitting function, ranges from 0.7 − 2.4%. It may need to be incorporated in the error budget as the precision of cosmographic inferences from single lenses improves, and it sets a precision limit on inferences from single lenses.

scholarly journals Resolving the excess of long GRB’s at low redshift in the Swift era

2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (1) ◽  
pp. 1479-1491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Truong Le ◽  
Cecilia Ratke ◽  
Vedant Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Physical Parameter ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Gamma Ray ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Star Formation History ◽  
Physical Parameters ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Energy Indices ◽  
Parameter Values

ABSTRACT Utilizing more than 100 long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) in the Swift-Ryan-2012 sample that includes the observed redshifts and jet angles, Le & Mehta performed a timely study of the rate density of LGRBs with an assumed broken power-law GRB spectrum and obtained a GRB-burst-rate functional form that gives acceptable fits to the pre-Swift and Swift redshift, and jet angle distributions. The results indicated an excess of LGRBs at redshift below z ∼ 2 in the Swift sample. In this work, we are investigating if the excess is caused by the cosmological Hubble constant H0, the gamma-ray energy released ${\cal E}_{*\gamma }$, the low- and high-energy indices (α, β) of the Band function, the minimum and maximum jet angles θj, min and θj, max, or that the excess is due to a bias in the Swift-Ryan-2012 sample. Our analyses indicate that none of the above physical parameters resolved the excess problem, but suggesting that the Swift-Ryan-2012 sample is biased with possible afterglow selection effect. The following model physical parameter values provide the best fit to the Swift-Ryan-2012 and pre-Swift samples: the Hubble constant $H_0 = 72 \, {\rm km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}}$, the energy released ${\cal E}_{*\gamma }\sim 4.47 \times 10^{51}$ erg, the energy indices α ∼ 0.9 and β ∼ −2.13, the jet angles of θj, max ∼ 0.8 rad, and θj, min ∼ 0.065 and ∼0.04 rad for pre-Swift and Swift, respectively, s ∼ −1.55 the jet angle power-law index, and a GRB formation rate that is similar to the Hopkins & Beacom observed star formation history and as extended by Li. Using the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Host Galaxy Legacy Survey (SHOALS) Swift-Perley LGRB sample and applying the same physical parameter values as above, however, our model provides consistent results with this data set and indicating no excess of LGRBs at any redshift.

scholarly journals A dedicated source-position transformation package: pySPT

2018 ◽  
Vol 619 ◽  
pp. A117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Wertz ◽  
Bastian Orthen
Keyword(s):  
Time Delays ◽  
Cosmological Parameters ◽  
Hubble Constant ◽  
Companion Paper ◽  
Source Position ◽  
Development Platform ◽  
Lens Modeling ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Modeling Code ◽  
The Impact

Modern time-delay cosmography aims to infer the cosmological parameters with a competitive precision from observing a multiply imaged quasar. The success of this technique relies upon a robust modeling of the lens mass distribution. Unfortunately strong degeneracies between density profiles that lead to almost the same lensing observables may bias precise estimates of the Hubble constant. The source position transformation (SPT), which covers the well-known mass-sheet transformation (MST) as a special case, defines a new framework to investigate these degeneracies. In this paper, we present pySPT, a python package dedicated to the SPT. We describe how it can be used to evaluate the impact of the SPT on lensing observables. We review most of its capabilities and elaborate on key features that we used in a companion paper regarding SPT and time delays. The pySPT program also comes with a subpackage dedicated to simple lens modeling. This can be used to generate lensing related quantities for a wide variety of lens models independent of any SPT analysis. As a first practical application, we present a correction to the first estimate of the impact on time delays of the SPT, which has been experimentally found in a previous work between a softened power law and composite (baryons + dark matter) lenses. We find that the large deviations previously predicted have been overestimated because of a minor bug in the public lens modeling code lensmodel (v1.99), which is now fixed. We conclude that the predictions for the Hubble constant deviate by ∼7%, first and foremost as a consequence of an MST. The latest version of pySPT is available on Github, a software development platform, along with some tutorials to describe in detail how making the best use of pySPT.

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