skip to main content


Title: TDCOSMO: XIV. Practical techniques for estimating external convergence of strong gravitational lens systems and applications to the SDSS J0924+0219 system

Context.Time-delay cosmography uses strong gravitational lensing of a time-variable source to infer the Hubble constant. The measurement is independent from both traditional distance ladder and CMB measurements. An accurate measurement with this technique requires considering the effects of objects along the line of sight outside the primary lens, which is quantified by the external convergence (κext). In absence of such corrections,H0will be biased towards higher values in overdense fields and lower values in underdense fields.

Aims.We discuss the current state of the methods used to account for environment effects. We present a new software package built for this kind of analysis and others that can leverage large astronomical survey datasets. We apply these techniques to the SDSS J0924+0219 strong lens field.

Methods.We infer the relative density of the SDSS J0924+0219 field by computing weighted number counts for all galaxies in the field, and comparing to weighted number counts computed for a large number of fields in a reference survey. We then compute weighted number counts in the Millennium Simulation and compare these results to infer the external convergence of the lens field.

Results.Our results show the SDSS J0924+0219 field is a fairly typical line of sight, with medianκext = −0.012 and standard deviationσκ = 0.028.

 
more » « less
Award ID(s):
1907396
PAR ID:
10475924
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Volume:
676
ISSN:
0004-6361
Page Range / eLocation ID:
A95
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract We investigate the environment and line of sight of the H0LiCOW lens B1608+656 using Subaru Suprime-Cam and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to perform a weak lensing analysis. We compare three different methods to reconstruct the mass map of the field, i.e. the standard Kaiser-Squires inversion coupled with inpainting and Gaussian or wavelet filtering, and ${\tt Glimpse}$ a method based on sparse regularization of the shear field. We find no substantial difference between the 2D mass reconstructions, but we find that the ground-based data is less sensitive to small-scale structures than the space-based observations. Marginalising over the results obtained with all the reconstruction techniques applied to the two available HST filters F606W and F814W, we estimate the external convergence, κext at the position of B1608+656 is $\kappa _{\mathrm{ext}}= 0.11^{+0.06}_{-0.04}$, where the error bars corresponds respectively to the 16th and 84th quartiles. This result is compatible with previous estimates using the number-counts technique, suggesting that B1608+656 resides in an over-dense line of sight, but with a completely different technique. Using our mass reconstructions, we also compare the convergence at the position of several groups of galaxies in the field of B1608+656 with the mass measurements using various analytical mass profiles, and find that the weak lensing results favor truncated halo models. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract

    Interpreting and reconstructing distant sources that are gravitationally lensed by galaxy clusters requires accurate and precise lens models. While high-quality data sets have reduced statistical errors in such models, systematic errors remain important. We examine systematic lensing effects caused by density fluctuations due to large-scale structure along the line of sight. We use a multiplane ray-tracing algorithm with the IllustrisTNG 100-3 cosmological simulation of matter distribution and compute the statistical distributions of shear, convergence, and higher-order deflections using two Hubble Frontier Field clusters as examples (A2744 and MACS J0416.1−2403). The cosmic shear distribution is Gaussian in each component, while the cosmic convergence distribution is skewed such that 1 +κis consistent with a log-normal distribution; the standard deviations for these quantities are at the level of a few to 10%, depending on the redshift of the source. The deflection from higher-order terms beyond convergence and shear has significant scatter: the rms deflection is ∼15″, considerably larger than the image position residuals for current lens models. These results indicate that line-of-sight deflection effects due to large-scale structure can significantly impact lens models and should not be neglected. We present results in forms that can be incorporated into future cluster lens models.

     
    more » « less
  3. Abstract

    The detection of GW170817 and the measurement of its redshift from the associated electromagnetic counterpart provided the first gravitational-wave (GW) determination of the Hubble constant (H0), demonstrating the potential power of standard siren cosmology. In contrast to this “bright siren” approach, the “dark siren” approach can be utilized for GW sources in the absence of an electromagnetic counterpart: One considers all galaxies contained within the localization volume as potential hosts. When statistically averaging over the potential host galaxies, weighting them by physically motivated properties (e.g., tracing star formation or stellar mass) could improve convergence. Using mock galaxy catalogs, we explore the impact of these weightings on the measurement ofH0. We find that incorrect weighting schemes can lead to significant biases due to two effects: the assumption of an incorrect galaxy redshift distribution, and preferentially weighting incorrect host galaxies during the inference. The magnitudes of these biases are influenced by the number of galaxies along each line of sight, the measurement uncertainty in the GW luminosity distance, and correlations in the parameter space of galaxies. We show that the bias may be overcome from improved localization constraints in future GW detectors, a strategic choice of priors or weighting prescription, and by restricting the analysis to a subset of high-signal-to-noise ratio events. We propose the use of hierarchical inference as a diagnostic of incorrectly weighted prescriptions. Such approaches can simultaneously infer the correct weighting scheme and the values of the cosmological parameters, thereby mitigating the bias in dark siren cosmology due to incorrect host-galaxy weighting.

     
    more » « less
  4. The importance of alternative methods for measuring the Hubble constant, such as time-delay cosmography, is highlighted by the recent Hubble tension. It is paramount to thoroughly investigate and rule out systematic biases in all measurement methods before we can accept new physics as the source of this tension. In this study, we perform a check for systematic biases in the lens modelling procedure of time-delay cosmography by comparing independent and blind time-delay predictions of the system WGD 2038−4008 from two teams using two different software programs:GLEEandLENSTRONOMY. The predicted time delays from the two teams incorporate the stellar kinematics of the deflector and the external convergence from line-of-sight structures. The un-blinded time-delay predictions from the two teams agree within 1.2σ, implying that once the time delay is measured the inferred Hubble constant will also be mutually consistent. However, there is a ∼4σdiscrepancy between the power-law model slope and external shear, which is a significant discrepancy at the level of lens models before the stellar kinematics and the external convergence are incorporated. We identify the difference in the reconstructed point spread function (PSF) to be the source of this discrepancy. When the same reconstructed PSF was used by both teams, we achieved excellent agreement, within ∼0.6σ, indicating that potential systematics stemming from source reconstruction algorithms and investigator choices are well under control. We recommend that future studies supersample the PSF as needed and marginalize over multiple algorithms or realizations for the PSF reconstruction to mitigate the systematics associated with the PSF. A future study will measure the time delays of the system WGD 2038−4008 and infer the Hubble constant based on our mass models.

     
    more » « less
  5. null (Ed.)
    ABSTRACT In time-delay cosmography, three of the key ingredients are (1) determining the velocity dispersion of the lensing galaxy, (2) identifying galaxies and groups along the line of sight with sufficient proximity and mass to be included in the mass model, and (3) estimating the external convergence κext from less massive structures that are not included in the mass model. We present results on all three of these ingredients for two time-delay lensed quad quasar systems, DES J0408–5354 and WGD 2038–4008 . We use the Gemini, Magellan, and VLT telescopes to obtain spectra to both measure the stellar velocity dispersions of the main lensing galaxies and to identify the line-of-sight galaxies in these systems. Next, we identify 10 groups in DES J0408–5354 and two groups in WGD 2038–4008 using a group-finding algorithm. We then identify the most significant galaxy and galaxy-group perturbers using the ‘flexion shift’ criterion. We determine the probability distribution function of the external convergence κext for both of these systems based on our spectroscopy and on the DES-only multiband wide-field observations. Using weighted galaxy counts, calibrated based on the Millennium Simulation, we find that DES J0408–5354 is located in a significantly underdense environment, leading to a tight (width $\sim 3{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$), negative-value κext distribution. On the other hand, WGD 2038–4008 is located in an environment of close to unit density, and its low source redshift results in a much tighter κext of $\sim 1{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$, as long as no external shear constraints are imposed. 
    more » « less