No Arabic abstract
Recently, Rastall gravity is undergoing a significant surge in popularity. We obtain a power-law total mass-density profile for the inner region (within several effective radius) of early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the space-time structures which are described by the static spherically-symmetric solutions of Rastall gravity under the assumption of perfect fluid matter. We find that in the inner region of ETGs, the Rastall dimensionless parameter $beta=kappalambda$ determines the mass distribution. We then use 118 galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lensing systems to constrain the Rastall dimensionless parameter $beta$. We find that the mean value of $beta$ for total 118 ETGs is $beta=0.163pm0.001$(68% CL) with a minor intrinsic scatter of $delta=0.020pm 0.001$. Our work observationally illustrates the physical meaning of the Rastall dimensionless parameter in galaxy scale. From the Newtonian approximation of Rastall gravity, we also find that an absolute isothermal mass distribution for ETGs is not allowed in the framework of Rastall gravity.
Strong gravitational lensing along with the distance sum rule method can constrain both cosmological parameters as well as density profiles of galaxies without assuming any fiducial cosmological model. To constrain galaxy parameters and cosmic curvature $(Omega_{k0})$, we use the distance ratio data from a recently compiled database of $161$ galactic scale strong lensing systems. We use databases of supernovae type-Ia (Pantheon) and Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) for calculating the luminosity distance. To study the model of the lens galaxy, we consider a general lens model namely, the Extended Power-Law model. Further, we take into account two different parametrisations of the mass density power-law index $(gamma)$ to study the dependence of $gamma$ on redshift. The best value of $Omega_{k0}$ suggests a closed universe, though a flat universe is accommodated at $68%$ confidence level. We find that parametrisations of $gamma$ have a negligible impact on the best fit value of the cosmic curvature parameter. Furthermore, measurement of time delay can be a promising cosmographic probe via time delay distance that includes the ratio of distances between the observer, the lens and the source. We again use the distance sum rule method with time-delay distance dataset of H0LiCOW to put constraints on the Cosmic Distance Duality Relation (CDDR) and the cosmic curvature parameter $(Omega_{k0})$. For this we consider two different redshift-dependent parametrisations of the distance duality parameter $(eta)$. The best fit value of $Omega_{k0}$ clearly indicates an open universe. However, a flat universe can be accommodated at $95%$ confidence level. Further, at $95%$ confidence level, no violation of CDDR is observed. We believe that a larger sample of strong gravitational lensing systems is needed in order to improve the constraints on the cosmic curvature and distance duality parameter.
Although general relativity (GR) has been precisely tested at the solar system scale, precise tests at a galactic or cosmological scale are still relatively insufficient. Here, in order to test GR at the galactic scale, we use the newly compiled galaxy-scale strong gravitational lensing (SGL) sample to constrain the parameter $gamma_{PPN}$ in the parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism. We employ the Pantheon sample of type Ia supernovae observation to calibrate the distances in the SGL systems using the Gaussian Process method, which avoids the logical problem caused by assuming a cosmological model within GR to determine the distances in the SGL sample. Furthermore, we consider three typical lens models in this work to investigate the influences of the lens mass distributions on the fitting results. We find that the choice of the lens models has a significant impact on the constraints on the PPN parameter $gamma_{PPN}$. We use the Bayesian information criterion as an evaluation tool to make a comparison for the fitting results of the three lens models, and we find that the most reliable lens model gives the result of $gamma_{PPN}=1.065^{+0.064}_{-0.074}$, which is in good agreement with the prediction of $gamma_{PPN}=1$ by GR. As far as we know, our 6.4% constraint result is the best result so far among the recent works using the SGL method.
Strong gravitational lenses provide an important tool to measure masses in the distant Universe, thus testing models for galaxy formation and dark matter; to investigate structure at the Epoch of Reionization; and to measure the Hubble constant and possibly w as a function of redshift. However, the limiting factor in all of these studies has been the currently small samples of known gravitational lenses (~10^2). The era of the SKA will transform our understanding of the Universe with gravitational lensing, particularly at radio wavelengths where the number of known gravitational lenses will increase to ~10^5. Here we discuss the technical requirements, expected outcomes and main scientific goals of a survey for strong gravitational lensing with the SKA. We find that an all-sky (3pi sr) survey carried out with the SKA1-MID array at an angular resolution of 0.25-0.5 arcsec and to a depth of 3 microJy / beam is required for studies of galaxy formation and cosmology with gravitational lensing. In addition, the capability to carryout VLBI with the SKA1 is required for tests of dark matter and studies of supermassive black holes at high redshift to be made using gravitational lensing.
We investigate how strong gravitational lensing can test contemporary models of massive elliptical (ME) galaxy formation, by combining a traditional decomposition of their visible stellar distribution with a lensing analysis of their mass distribution. As a proof of concept, we study a sample of three ME lenses, observing that all are composed of two distinct baryonic structures, a `red central bulge surrounded by an extended envelope of stellar material. Whilst these two components look photometrically similar, their distinct lensing effects permit a clean decomposition of their mass structure. This allows us to infer two key pieces of information about each lens galaxy: (i) the stellar mass distribution (without invoking stellar populations models) and (ii) the inner dark matter halo mass. We argue that these two measurements are crucial to testing models of ME formation, as the stellar mass profile provides a diagnostic of baryonic accretion and feedback whilst the dark matter mass places each galaxy in the context of LCDM large scale structure formation. We also detect large rotational offsets between the two stellar components and a lopsidedness in their outer mass distributions, which hold further information on the evolution of each ME. Finally, we discuss how this approach can be extended to galaxies of all Hubble types and what implication our results have for studies of strong gravitational lensing.
Luminosity profiles of galaxies acting as strong gravitational lenses can be tricky to study. Indeed, strong gravitational lensing images display several lensed components, both point-like and diffuse, around the lensing galaxy. Those objects limit the study of the galaxy luminosity to its inner parts. Therefore, the usual fitting methods perform rather badly on such images. Previous studies of strong lenses luminosity profiles using software such as GALFIT or IMFITFITS and various PSF-determining methods have resulted in discrepant results. The present work aims at investigating the causes of those discrepancies, as well as at designing more robust techniques for studying the morphology of early-type lensing galaxies with the ability to subtract a lensed signal from their luminosity profiles. We design a new method to independently measure each shape parameter, namely, the position angle, ellipticity, and half-light radius of the galaxy. Our half-light radius measurement method is based on an innovative scheme for computing isophotes that is well suited to measuring the morphological properties of gravitational lensing galaxies. Its robustness regarding various specific aspects of gravitational lensing image processing is analysed and tested against GALFIT. It is applied to a sample of systems from the CASTLES database. Simulations show that when restricted to small, inner parts of the lensing galaxy, the technique presented here is more trustworthy than GALFIT. It gives more robust results than GALFIT, which shows instabilities regarding the fitting region, the value of the Sersic index, and the signal-to-noise ratio. It is therefore better suited than GALFIT for gravitational lensing galaxies. It is also able to study lensing galaxies that are not much larger than the PSF. New values for the half-light radius of the objects in our sample are presented and compared to previous works.