Quantifying the Impact of Cosmological Parameter Uncertainties on Strong Lensing Models With an Eye Toward the Frontier Fields

We test the effects of varying the cosmological parameter values used in the strong lens modeling process for the six Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) galaxy clusters. The standard procedure for generating high fidelity strong lens models includes careful consideration of uncertainties in the output models that result from varying model parameters within the bounds of available data constraints. It is not, however, common practice to account for the effects of cosmological parameter value uncertainties. The convention is to instead use a single fiducial concordance cosmology and generate lens models assuming zero uncertainty in cosmological parameter values. We find that the magnification maps of the individual HFF clusters vary significantly when lens models are computed using different cosmological parameter values taken from recent literature constraints from space- and ground-based experiments. Specifically, the magnification maps have average variances across the best fit models computed using different cosmologies that are comparable in magnitude to - and as much as 2.5 times larger than - the model fitting uncertainties in each best fit model. We also find that estimates of the mass profiles of the cluster cores themselves vary only slightly when different input cosmological parameters are used. We conclude that cosmological parameter uncertainty is a non-negligible source of uncertainty in lens model products for the HFF clusters, and that it is important that current and future work which relies on precision strong lensing models take care to account for this additional source of uncertainty.

Probing Individual Star Forming Regions Within Strongly Lensed Galaxies at z > 1

Star formation occurs on physical scales corresponding to individual star forming regions, typically of order ~100 parsecs in size, but current observational facilities cannot resolve these scales within field galaxies beyond the local universe. However, the magnification from strong gravitational lensing allows us to measure the properties of these discrete star forming regions within galaxies in the distant universe. New results from multi-wavelength spectroscopic studies of a sample of extremely bright, highly magnified lensed galaxies are revealing the complexity of star formation on sub-galaxy scales during the era of peak star formation in the universe. We find a wide range of properties in the rest-frame UV spectra of individual galaxies, as well as in spectra that originate from different star forming regions within the same galaxy. Large variations in the strengths and velocity structure of Lyman-alpha and strong P Cygni lines such as C IV, and MgII provide new insights into the astrophysical relationships between extremely massive stars, the elemental abundances and physical properties of the nebular gas those stars ionize, and the galactic-scale outflows they power.

Line-of-Sight Structure Toward Strong Lensing Galaxy Clusters

We present an analysis of the line-of-sight structure toward a sample of ten strong lensing cluster cores. Structure is traced by groups that are identified spectroscopically in the redshift range, 0.1 $leq$ z $leq$ 0.9, and we measure the projected angular and comoving separations between each group and the primary strong lensing clusters in each corresponding line of sight. From these data we measure the distribution of projected angular separations between the primary strong lensing clusters and uncorrelated large scale structure as traced by groups. We then compare the observed distribution of angular separations for our strong lensing selected lines of sight against the distribution of groups that is predicted for clusters lying along random lines of sight. There is clear evidence for an excess of structure along the line of sight at small angular separations ($theta leq 6$) along the strong lensing selected lines of sight, indicating that uncorrelated structure is a significant systematic that contributes to producing galaxy clusters with large cross sections for strong lensing. The prevalence of line-of-sight structure is one of several biases in strong lensing clusters that can potentially be folded into cosmological measurements using galaxy cluster samples. These results also have implications for current and future studies -- such as the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields -- that make use of massive galaxy cluster lenses as precision cosmological telescopes; it is essential that the contribution of line-of-sight structure be carefully accounted for in the strong lens modeling of the cluster lenses.

Optical Spectroscopy and Velocity Dispersions of Galaxy Clusters from the SPT-SZ Survey

We present optical spectroscopy of galaxies in clusters detected through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect with the South Pole Telescope (SPT). We report our own measurements of $61$ spectroscopic cluster redshifts, and $48$ velocity dispersions each calculated with more than $15$ member galaxies. This catalog also includes $19$ dispersions of SPT-observed clusters previously reported in the literature. The majority of the clusters in this paper are SPT-discovered; of these, most have been previously reported in other SPT cluster catalogs, and five are reported here as SPT discoveries for the first time. By performing a resampling analysis of galaxy velocities, we find that unbiased velocity dispersions can be obtained from a relatively small number of member galaxies ($lesssim 30$), but with increased systematic scatter. We use this analysis to determine statistical confidence intervals that include the effect of membership selection. We fit scaling relations between the observed cluster velocity dispersions and mass estimates from SZ and X-ray observables. In both cases, the results are consistent with the scaling relation between velocity dispersion and mass expected from dark-matter simulations. We measure a $sim$30% log-normal scatter in dispersion at fixed mass, and a $sim$10% offset in the normalization of the dispersion-mass relation when compared to the expectation from simulations, which is within the expected level of systematic uncertainty.

The Physical Conditions, Metallicity and Metal Abundance Ratios In a Highly Magnified Galaxy at z = 3.6252

We present optical and near-IR imaging and spectroscopy of SGAS J105039.6$+$001730, a strongly lensed galaxy at z $=$ 3.6252 magnified by $>$30$times$, and derive its physical properties. We measure a stellar mass of log(M$_{*}$/M$_{odot}$) $=$ 9.5 $pm$ 0.35, star formation rates from [O II]$lambda$$lambda$3727 and H-$beta$ of 55 $pm$ 20 and 84 $pm$ 17 M$_{odot}$ yr$^{-1}$, respectively, an electron density of n$_{e} leq$ 10$^{3}$ cm$^{-2}$, an electron temperature of T$_{e} leq$ 14000 K, and a metallicity of 12+log(O/H) $=$ 8.3 $pm$ 0.1. The strong C III]$lambda$$lambda$1907,1909 emission and abundance ratios of C, N, O and Si are consistent with well-studied starbursts at z $sim$ 0 with similar metallicities. Strong P Cygni lines and He II$lambda$1640 emission indicate a significant population of Wolf-Rayet stars, but synthetic spectra of individual populations of young, hot stars do not reproduce the observed integrated P Cygni absorption features. The rest-frame UV spectral features are indicative of a young starburst with high ionization, implying either 1) an ionization parameter significantly higher than suggest by rest-frame optical nebular lines, or 2) differences in one or both of the initial mass function and the properties of ionizing spectra of massive stars. We argue that the observed features are likely the result of a superposition of star forming regions with different physical properties. These results demonstrate the complexity of star formation on scales smaller than individual galaxies, and highlight the importance of systematic effects that result from smearing together the signatures of individual star forming regions within galaxies.

SPT-CLJ2040-4451: An SZ-Selected Galaxy Cluster at z = 1.478 With Significant Ongoing Star Formation

SPT-CLJ2040-4451 -- spectroscopically confirmed at z = 1.478 -- is the highest redshift galaxy cluster yet discovered via the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. SPT-CLJ2040-4451 was a candidate galaxy cluster identified in the first 720 deg^2 of the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SPT-SZ) survey, and confirmed in follow-up imaging and spectroscopy. From multi-object spectroscopy with Magellan-I/Baade+IMACS we measure spectroscopic redshifts for 15 cluster member galaxies, all of which have strong [O II] 3727 emission. SPT-CLJ2040-4451 has an SZ-measured mass of M_500,SZ = 3.2 +/- 0.8 X 10^14 M_Sun/h_70, corresponding to M_200,SZ = 5.8 +/- 1.4 X 10^14 M_Sun/h_70. The velocity dispersion measured entirely from blue star forming members is sigma_v = 1500 +/- 520 km/s. The prevalence of star forming cluster members (galaxies with > 1.5 M_Sun/yr) implies that this massive, high-redshift cluster is experiencing a phase of active star formation, and supports recent results showing a marked increase in star formation occurring in galaxy clusters at z >1.4. We also compute the probability of finding a cluster as rare as this in the SPT-SZ survey to be >99%, indicating that its discovery is not in tension with the concordance Lambda-CDM cosmological model.