The effect of low mass substructures on the Cusp lensing relation

It has been argued that the flux anomalies detected in gravitationally lensed QSOs are evidence for substructures in the foreground lensing haloes. In this paper we investigate this issue in greater detail focusing on the Cusp relation which corresponds to images of a source located to the cusp of the inner caustic curve. We use numerical simulations combined with a Monte Carlo approach to study the effects of the expected power law distribution of substructures within LCDM haloes on the multiple images. Generally, the high number of anomalous flux ratios in the cusp configurations is unlikely explained by 'simple' perturbers (subhaloes) inside the lensing galaxy, either modeled by point masses or extended NFW subhaloes. We considered in our analysis a mass range of 10^5-10^7 Msun for the subhaloes. We also demonstrate that including the effects of the surrounding mass distribution, such as other galaxies close to the primary lens, does not change the results. We conclude that triple images of lensed QSOs do not show any direct evidence for dark dwarf galaxies such as cold dark matter substructure.Comment: 10 pages, 19 figures, Effects of different subhalos concentrations discussed, analysis improved, accepted by MNRA

A New Estimate of the Hubble Time with Improved Modeling of Gravitational Lenses

This paper examines free-form modeling of gravitational lenses using Bayesian ensembles of pixelated mass maps. The priors and algorithms from previous work are clarified and significant technical improvements are made. Lens reconstruction and Hubble Time recovery are tested using mock data from simple analytic models and recent galaxy-formation simulations. Finally, using published data, the Hubble Time is inferred through the simultaneous reconstruction of eleven time-delay lenses. The result is H_0^{-1}=13.7^{+1.8}_{-1.0} Gyr.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures. Accepted to Ap

Tracing the Nature of Dark Energy with Galaxy Distribution

Dynamical Dark Energy (DE) is a viable alternative to the cosmological constant. Yet, constructing tests to discriminate between Lambda and dynamical DE models is difficult because the differences are not large. In this paper we explore tests based on the galaxy mass function, the void probability function (VPF), and the number of galaxy clusters. At high z the number density of clusters shows large differences between DE models, but geometrical factors reduce the differences substantially. We find that detecting a model dependence in the cluster redshift distribution is a hard challenge. We show that the galaxy redshift distribution is potentially a more sensitive characteristics. We do so by populating dark matter halos in Nbody simulations with galaxies using well-tested Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD). We also estimate the Void Probability Function and find that, in samples with the same angular surface density of galaxies in different models, the VPF is almost model independent and cannot be used as a test for DE. Once again, geometry and cosmic evolution compensate each other. By comparing VPF's for samples with fixed galaxy mass limits, we find measurable differences.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, dependence on mass-luminosity relation discussed, minor changes to match the accepted version by MNRA

Concentration, Spin and Shape of Dark Matter Haloes as a Function of the Cosmological Model: WMAP1, WMAP3 and WMAP5 results

We investigate the effects of changes in the cosmological parameters between the WMAP 1st, 3rd, and 5th year results on the structure of dark matter haloes. We use a set of simulations that cover 5 decades in halo mass ranging from the scales of dwarf galaxies (V_c ~30 km/s) to clusters of galaxies (V_c ~ 1000 km/s). We find that the concentration mass relation is a power law in all three cosmologies. However the slope is shallower and the zero point is lower moving from WMAP1 to WMAP5 to WMAP3. For haloes of mass log(M_200/Msun) = 10, 12, and 14 the differences in the concentration parameter between WMAP1 and WMAP3 are a factor of 1.55, 1.41, and 1.29, respectively. As we show, this brings the central densities of dark matter haloes in good agreement with the central densities of dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies inferred from their rotation curves, for both the WMAP3 and WMAP5 cosmologies. We also show that none of the existing toy models for the concentration-mass relation can reproduce our simulation results over the entire range of masses probed. In particular, the model of Bullock et al (B01) fails at the higher mass end (M > 1e13 Msun), while the NFW model of Navarro, Frenk & White (1997) fails dramatically at the low mass end (M < 1e12 Msun). We present a new model, based on a simple modification of that of B01, which reproduces the concentration-mass relations in our simulations over the entire range of masses probed (1e10 Msun < M < 1e15 Msun). Haloes in the WMAP3 cosmology (at a fixed mass) are more flatted compared to the WMAP1 cosmology, with a medium to long axis ration reduced by ~10 %. Finally, we show that the distribution of halo spin parameters is the same for all three cosmologies.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, references updated, minor changes. Accepted for publication on MNRAS. WMAP5 simulations available upon reques

Radial density profiles of time-delay lensing galaxies

We present non-parametric radial mass profiles for ten QSO strong lensing galaxies. Five of the galaxies have profiles close to $\rho(r)\propto r^{-2}$, while the rest are closer to r^{-1}, consistent with an NFW profile. The former are all relatively isolated early-types and dominated by their stellar light. The latter --though the modeling code did not know this-- are either in clusters, or have very high mass-to-light, suggesting dark-matter dominant lenses (one is a actually pair of merging galaxies). The same models give H_0^{-1} = 15.2_{-1.7}^{+2.5}\Gyr (H_0 = 64_{-9}^{+8} \legacy), consistent with a previous determination. When tested on simulated lenses taken from a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, our modeling pipeline recovers both H_0 and $\rho(r)$ within estimated uncertainties. Our result is contrary to some recent claims that lensing time delays imply either a low H_0 or galaxy profiles much steeper than r^{-2}. We diagnose these claims as resulting from an invalid modeling approximation: that small deviations from a power-law profile have a small effect on lensing time-delays. In fact, as we show using using both perturbation theory and numerical computation from a galaxy-formation simulation, a first-order perturbation of an isothermal lens can produce a zeroth-order change in the time delays.Comment: Replaced with final version accepted for publication in ApJ; very minor changes to text; high resolution figures may be obtained at justinread.ne