670 research outputs found
GEMPIC: Geometric ElectroMagnetic Particle-In-Cell Methods
We present a novel framework for Finite Element Particle-in-Cell methods
based on the discretization of the underlying Hamiltonian structure of the
Vlasov-Maxwell system. We derive a semi-discrete Poisson bracket, which retains
the defining properties of a bracket, anti-symmetry and the Jacobi identity, as
well as conservation of its Casimir invariants, implying that the semi-discrete
system is still a Hamiltonian system. In order to obtain a fully discrete
Poisson integrator, the semi-discrete bracket is used in conjunction with
Hamiltonian splitting methods for integration in time. Techniques from Finite
Element Exterior Calculus ensure conservation of the divergence of the magnetic
field and Gauss' law as well as stability of the field solver. The resulting
methods are gauge invariant, feature exact charge conservation and show
excellent long-time energy and momentum behaviour. Due to the generality of our
framework, these conservation properties are guaranteed independently of a
particular choice of the Finite Element basis, as long as the corresponding
Finite Element spaces satisfy certain compatibility conditions.Comment: 57 Page
Probing Dark Matter Substructure in Lens Galaxies
We investigate the effects of numerous dark matter subhalos in a galaxy-sized
halo on the events of strong lensing, to assess their presence as expected from
the cold dark matter scenario. Lens galaxies are represented by a smooth
ellipsoid in an external shear field and additional cold dark matter subhalos
taken from Monte Carlo realizations which accord with recent N-body results. We
also consider other possible perturbers, globular clusters and luminous dwarf
satellites, for comparison. We then apply the models to the particular lens
systems with four images, B1422+231 and PG1115+080, for which smooth lens
models are unable to reproduce both the positions of the images and their radio
flux ratios or dust-free optical flux ratios simultaneously. We show that the
perturbations by both globular clusters and dwarf satellites are too small to
change the flux ratios, whereas cold dark matter subhalos are most likely
perturbers to reproduce the observed flux ratios in a statistically significant
manner. This result suggests us the presence of numerous subhalos in lens
galaxies, which is consistent with the results of cosmological N-body
simulations.Comment: 19 pages, including 5 figures, ApJ in pres
A New Einstein Cross: A Highly Magnified, Intrinsically Faint Lyman-Alpha Emitter at z=2.7
We report the discovery of a new Einstein cross at redshift z_S = 2.701 based
on Lyman-alpha emission in a cruciform configuration around an SDSS luminous
red galaxy (z_L = 0.331). The system was targeted as a possible lens based on
an anomalous emission line in the SDSS spectrum. Imaging and spectroscopy from
the W. M. Keck Observatory confirm the lensing nature of this system. This is
one of the widest-separation galaxy-scale lenses known, with an Einstein radius
of ~1.84 arcsec. We present simple gravitational lens models for the system and
compute the intrinsic properties of the lensed galaxy. The total mass of the
lensing galaxy within the 8.8 +/- 0.1 kpc enclosed by the lensed images is (5.2
+/- 0.1) x 10^11 M_sun. The lensed galaxy is a low mass galaxy (0.2 L*) with a
high equivalent-width Lyman-alpha line (EW_Lya_rest = 46 +/- 5 Angstroms).
Follow-up studies of this lens system can probe the mass structure of the
lensing galaxy, and can provide a unique view of an intrinsically faint,
high-redshift, star-forming galaxy at high signal-to-noise ratio.Comment: ApJ Letters, in pres
Gravitational Lenses With More Than Four Images: I. Classification of Caustics
We study the problem of gravitational lensing by an isothermal elliptical
density galaxy in the presence of a tidal perturbation. When the perturbation
is fairly strong and oriented near the galaxy's minor axis, the lens can
produce image configurations with six or even eight highly magnified images
lying approximately on a circle. We classify the caustic structures in the
model and identify the range of models that can produce such lenses. Sextuple
and octuple lenses are likely to be rare because they require special lens
configurations, but a full calculation of the likelihood will have to include
both the existence of lenses with multiple lens galaxies and the strong
magnification bias that affects sextuple and octuple lenses. At optical
wavelengths these lenses would probably appear as partial or complete Einstein
rings, but at radio wavelengths the individual images could probably be
resolved.Comment: 30 pages, including 12 postscript figures; accepted for publication
in Ap
Testing a new analytic model for gravitational lensing probabilities
We study gravitational lensing with a multiple lens plane approach, proposing
a simple analytical model for the probability distribution function (PDF) of
the dark matter convergence, kappa, for the different lens planes in a given
cosmology as a function of redshift and smoothing angle, theta. The model is
fixed solely by the variance of kappa, which in turn is fixed by the amplitude
of the power spectrum, sigma_8. We test the PDF against a high resolution
Tree-Particle-Mesh simulation and find that it is far superior to the Gaussian
or the lognormal, especially for small values of theta << 1 arcmin and at large
values of kappa relevant to strong lensing. With this model, we predict the
probabilities of strong lensing by a single plane or by multiple planes. We
find that for theta ~ 10 arcsec, a single plane accounts for almost all (~ 98%)
of the strong lensing cases for source redshift unity. However, for a more
typical source redshift of 4, about 12% of the strong lensing cases will result
from the contribution of a secondary clump of matter along the line of sight,
introducing a systematic error in the determination of the surface density of
clusters, typically overestimating it by about 2-5%. We also find that matter
inhomogenieties introduce a dispersion in the value of the angular diameter
distance about its cosmological mean. The probable error relative to the mean
increases with redshift to a value of about 8% for z ~ 6 and theta ~ 10 arcsec.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 13 pages, 12 figures, revised
version, references added, section 6 expande
The Top Ten List of Gravitational Lens Candidates from the HST Medium Deep Survey
A total of 10 good candidates for gravitational lensing have been discovered
in the WFPC2 images from the HST Medium Deep Survey (MDS) and archival primary
observations. These candidate lenses are unique HST discoveries, i.e. they are
faint systems with sub-arcsecond separations between the lensing objects and
the lensed source images. Most of them are difficult objects for ground-based
spectroscopic confirmation or for measurement of the lens and source redshifts.
Seven are ``strong lens'' candidates which appear to have multiple images of
the source. Three are cases where the single image of the source galaxy has
been significantly distorted into an arc. The first two quadruply lensed
candidates were reported in Ratnatunga et al 1995 (ApJL, 453, L5) We report on
the subsequent eight candidates and describe them with simple models based on
the assumption of singular isothermal potentials. Residuals from the simple
models for some of the candidates indicate that a more complex model for the
potential will probably be required to explain the full structural detail of
the observations once they are confirmed to be lenses. We also discuss the
effective survey area which was searched for these candidate lens objects.Comment: 26 pages including 12 figures and 10 tables. AJ Vol. 117, No.
New Modeling of the Lensing Galaxy and Cluster of Q0957+561: Implications for the Global Value of the Hubble Constant
The gravitational lens 0957+561 is modeled utilizing recent observations of
the galaxy and the cluster as well as previous VLBI radio data which have been
re-analyzed recently. The galaxy is modeled by a power-law elliptical mass
density with a small core while the cluster is modeled by a non-singular
power-law sphere as indicated by recent observations. Using all of the current
available data, the best-fit model has a reduced chi-squared of approximately 6
where the chi-squared value is dominated by a small portion of the
observational constraints used; this value of the reduced chi-squared is
similar to that of the recent FGSE best-fit model by Barkana et al. However,
the derived value of the Hubble constant is significantly different from the
value derived from the FGSE model. We find that the value of the Hubble
constant is given by H_0 = 69 +18/-12 (1-K) and 74 +18/-17 (1-K) km/s/Mpc with
and without a constraint on the cluster's mass, respectively, where K is the
convergence of the cluster at the position of the galaxy and the range for each
value is defined by Delta chi-squared = reduced chi-squared. Presently, the
best achievable fit for this system is not as good as for PG 1115+080, which
also has recently been used to constrain the Hubble constant, and the
degeneracy is large. Possibilities for improving the fit and reducing the
degeneracy are discussed.Comment: 22 pages in aaspp style including 6 tables and 5 figures, ApJ in
press (Nov. 1st issue
Analytic Time Delays and H_0 Estimates for Gravitational Lenses
We study gravitational lens time delays for a general family of lensing
potentials, which includes the popular singular isothermal elliptical potential
and singular isothermal elliptical density distribution but allows general
angular structure. Using a novel approach, we show that the time delay can be
cast in a very simple form, depending only on the observed image positions.
Including an external shear changes the time delay proportional to the shear
strength, and varying the radial profile of the potential changes the time
delay approximately linearly. These analytic results can be used to obtain
simple estimates of the time delay and the Hubble constant in observed
gravitational lenses. The naive estimates for four of five time delay lenses
show surprising agreement with each other and with local measurements of H_0;
the complicated Q 0957+561 system is the only outlier. The agreement suggests
that it is reasonable to use simple isothermal lens models to infer H_0,
although it is still important to check this conclusion by examining detailed
models and by measuring more lensing time delays.Comment: 16 pages with 2 embedded figures; submitted to Ap
Shear and Ellipticity in Gravitational Lenses
Galaxies modeled as singular isothermal ellipsoids with an axis ratio
distribution similar to the observed axis ratio distribution of E and S0
galaxies are statistically consistent with both the observed numbers of
two-image and four-image lenses and the inferred ellipticities of individual
lenses. However, no four-image lens is well fit by the model (typical
), the axis ratio of the model can be significantly
different from that of the observed lens galaxy, and the major axes of the
model and the galaxy may be slightly misaligned. We found that models with a
second, independent, external shear axis could fit the data well (typical
), while adding the same number of extra parameters to
the radial mass distribution does not produce such a dramatic improvement in
the fit. An independent shear axis can be produced by misalignments between the
luminous galaxy and its dark matter halo, or by external shear perturbations
due to galaxies and clusters correlated with the primary lens or along the line
of sight. We estimate that the external shear perturbations have no significant
effect on the expected numbers of two-image and four-image lenses, but that
they can be important perturbations in individual lens models. However, the
amplitudes of the external shears required to produce the good fits are larger
than our estimates for typical external shear perturbations (10-15% shear
instead of 1-3% shear) suggesting that the origin of the extra angular
structure must be intrinsic to the primary lens galaxy in most cases.Comment: 38 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Ap
Can Strong Gravitational Lensing Constrain Dark Energy?
We discuss the ratio of the angular diameter distances from the source to the
lens, , and to the observer at present, , for various dark
energy models. It is well known that the difference of s between the
models is apparent and this quantity is used for the analysis of Type Ia
supernovae. However we investigate the difference between the ratio of the
angular diameter distances for a cosmological constant,
and that for other dark energy models,
in this paper. It has been known that there is
lens model degeneracy in using strong gravitational lensing. Thus, we
investigate the model independent observable quantity, Einstein radius
(), which is proportional to both and velocity
dispersion squared, . values depend on the parameters
of each dark energy model individually. However, for the various dark energy models, is well within
the error of for most of the parameter spaces of the dark energy
models. Thus, a single strong gravitational lensing by use of the Einstein
radius may not be a proper method to investigate the property of dark energy.
However, better understanding to the mass profile of clusters in the future or
other methods related to arc statistics rather than the distances may be used
for constraints on dark energy.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, Accepted in PR
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