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Register a new userThe Redshift of a Lensing Galaxy in PMN J0134-0931
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Patrick B. Hall
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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) automatically targeted as a quasar candidate the recently discovered, gravitationally lensed, extremely reddened z=2.2 quasar PMN J0134-0931. The SDSS spectrum exhibits Ca II absorption at z=0.76451, which we identify as the redshift of a lensing galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope imaging shows that components CDE of the system are significantly redder than components A or B and detects faint galaxy emission between D and A+B. The redshift of the dust responsible for the reddening remains unconstrained with current data. However, we outline a model wherein lensing and differential reddening by a z=0.76451 galaxy pair can entirely explain this system. Detecting mm-wave molecular line absorption from the lensing galaxy or galaxies may be possible in PMN J0134-0931, just as in the lenses PKS1830-211 and B0218+357. Well-constructed optical quasar surveys like the SDSS can contribute to the detection and study of reddened quasars. (Expanded)
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The radio-loud quasar PMN J0134-0931 was discovered to have an unusual morphology during our search for gravitational lenses. In VLA and MERLIN images, there are 5 compact components with maximum separation 681 millarcseconds. All of these components have the same spectral index from 5 GHz to 43 GHz. In a VLBA image at 1.7 GHz, a curved arc of extended emission joins two of the components in a manner suggestive of gravitational lensing. At least two of the radio components have near-infrared counterparts. We argue that this evidence implies that J0134-0931 is a gravitational lens, although we have not been able to devise a plausible model for the foreground gravitational potential. Like several other radio-loud lenses, the background source has an extraordinarily red optical counterpart.
We present VLT spectroscopic observations of 7 discovered galaxy groups between 0.3<z<0.7. The groups were selected from the Strong Lensing Legacy Survey (SL2S), a survey that consists in a systematic search for strong lensing systems in the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS). We give details about the target selection, spectroscopic observations and data reduction for the first release of confirmed SL2S groups. The dynamical analysis of the systems reveals that they are gravitationally bound structures, with at least 4 confirmed members and velocity dispersions between 300 and 800 km/s. Their virial masses are between 10^13 and 10^14 M_sun, and so can be classified as groups or low mass clusters. Most of the systems are isolated groups, except two of them that show evidence of an ongoing merger of two sub-structures. We find a good agreement between the velocity dispersions estimated from the analysis of the kinematics of group galaxies and the weak lensing measurements, and conclude that the dynamics of baryonic matter is a good tracer of the total mass content in galaxy groups.
The gravitational lens system CLASS B2108+213 has two radio-loud lensed images separated by 4.56 arcsec. The relatively large image separation implies that the lensing is caused by a group of galaxies. In this paper, new optical imaging and spectroscopic data for the lensing galaxies of B2108+213 and the surrounding field galaxies are presented. These data are used to investigate the mass and composition of the lensing structure. The redshift and stellar velocity dispersion of the main lensing galaxy (G1) are found to be z = 0.3648 +/- 0.0002 and sigma_v = 325 +/- 25 km/s, respectively. The optical spectrum of the lensed quasar shows no obvious emission or absorption features and is consistent with a BL Lac type radio source. However, the tentative detection of the G-band and Mg-b absorption lines, and a break in the spectrum of the host galaxy of the lensed quasar gives a likely source redshift of z = 0.67. Spectroscopy of the field around B2108+213 finds 51 galaxies at a similar redshift to G1, thus confirming that there is a much larger structure at z ~ 0.365 associated with this system. The width of the group velocity distribution is 694 +/- 93 km/s, but is non-Gaussian, implying that the structure is not yet viralized. The main lensing galaxy is also the brightest group member and has a surface brightness profile consistent with a typical cD galaxy. A lensing and dynamics analysis of the mass distribution, which also includes the newly found group members, finds that the logarithmic slope of the mass density profile is on average isothermal inside the Einstein radius, but steeper at the location of the Einstein radius. This apparent change in slope can be accounted for if an external convergence gradient, representing the underlying parent halo of the galaxy group, is included in the mass model.
Cosmological cluster-scale strong gravitational lensing probes the mass distribution of the dense cores of massive dark matter halos and the structures along the line of sight from background sources to the observer. It is frequently assumed that the primary lens mass dominates the lensing, with the contribution of secondary masses along the line of sight being neglected. Secondary mass structures may, however, affect both the detectability of strong lensing in a given survey and modify the properties of the lensing that is detected. In this paper, we utilize a large cosmological N-body simulation and a multiple lens plane (and many source planes) ray-tracing technique to quantify the influence of line of sight halos on the detectability of cluster-scale strong lensing in a cluster sample with a mass limit that encompasses current cluster catalogs from the South Pole Telescope. We extract both primary and secondary halos from the Outer Rim simulation and consider two strong lensing realizations: one with only the primary halos included, and the other contains all secondary halos down to a mass limit. In both cases, we use the same source information extracted from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, and create realistic lensed images consistent with moderately deep ground-based imaging. The results demonstrate that down to the mass limit considered the total number of lenses is boosted by about 13-21% when considering the complete multi-halo lightcone. The increment in strong lens counts peaks at lens redshifts of 0.6 approximately with no significant effect at z<0.3. The strongest trends are observed relative to the primary halo mass, with no significant impact in the most massive quintile of the halo sample, but increasingly boosting the observed lens counts toward small primary halo masses, with an enhancement greater than 50% in the least massive quintile of the halo masses considered.
We use weak lensing shear measurements of six z>0.5 clusters of galaxies to derive the mean lensing redshift of the background galaxies used to measure the shear. Five of these clusters are compared to X-ray mass models and verify a mean lensing redshift for a 23<R<26.3, R-I<0.9 background galaxy population in good agreement with photometric redshift surveys of the HDF-S. The lensing strength of the six clusters is also analyzed as a function of the magnitude of the background galaxies, and an increase in shear with increasing magnitude is detected at moderate significance. The change in the strength of the shear is presumed to be caused by an increase in the mean redshift of the background galaxies with increasing magnitude, and the degree of change detected is also in agreement with those in photometric redshift surveys of the HDF-S.
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