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ABSTRACT A promising route for revealing the existence of dark matter structures on mass scales smaller than the faintest galaxies is through their effect on strong gravitational lenses. We examine the role of local, lens-proximate clustering in boosting the lensing probability relative to contributions from substructure and unclustered line-of-sight (LOS) haloes. Using two cosmological simulations that can resolve halo masses of Mhalo ≃ 109 M⊙ (in a simulation box of length $$L_{\rm box}{\sim }100\, {\rm Mpc}$$) and 107 M⊙ ($$L_{\rm box}\sim 20\, {\rm Mpc}$$), we demonstrate that clustering in the vicinity of the lens host produces a clear enhancement relative to an assumption of unclustered haloes that persists to $$\gt 20\, R_{\rm vir}$$. This enhancement exceeds estimates that use a two-halo term to account for clustering, particularly within $$2-5\, R_{\rm vir}$$. We provide an analytic expression for this excess, clustered contribution. We find that local clustering boosts the expected count of 109 M⊙ perturbing haloes by $$\sim \! 35{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$$ compared to substructure alone, a result that will significantly enhance expected signals for low-redshift (zl ≃ 0.2) lenses, where substructure contributes substantially compared to LOS haloes. We also find that the orientation of the lens with respect to the line of sight (e.g. whether the line of sight passes through the major axis of the lens) can also have a significant effect on the lensing signal, boosting counts by an additional $$\sim 50{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$$ compared to a random orientations. This could be important if discovered lenses are biased to be oriented along their principal axis.
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