Constraints on cosmological models from lens redshift data

Strong lensing has developed into an important astrophysical tool for probing both cosmology and galaxies (their structures, formations, and evolutions). Now several hundreds of strong lens systems produced by massive galaxies have been discovered, which may form well-defined samples useful for statistical analyses. To collect a relatively complete lens redshift data from various large systematic surveys of gravitationally lensed quasars and check the possibility to use it as a future complementarity to other cosmological probes. We use the distribution of gravitationally-lensed image separations observed in the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS), the PMN-NVSS Extragalactic Lens Survey (PANELS), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and other surveys, considering a singular isothermal ellipsoid (SIE) model for galactic potentials as well as improved new measurements of the velocity dispersion function of galaxies based on the SDSS DR5 data and recent semi-analytical modeling of galaxy formation, to constrain two dark energy models ($\Lambda$CDM and constant $w$) under a flat universe assumption. We find that the current lens redshift data give a relatively weak constraint on the model parameters. However, by combing the redshift data with the baryonic acoustic oscillation peak and the comic macrowave background data, we obtain more stringent results, which show that the flat $\Lambda$ CDM model is still included at 1$\sigma$.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, A&A accepte

Testing the phenomenological interacting dark energy with observational H(z)H(z) data

In order to test the possible interaction between dark energy and dark matter, we investigate observational constraints on a phenomenological scenario, in which the ratio between the dark energy and matter densities is proportional to the power law case of the scale factor, $r\equiv (\rho_X/\rho_m)\propto a^{\xi}$. By using the Markov chain Monte Carlo method, we constrain the phenomenological interacting dark energy model with the newly revised $H(z)$ data, as well as the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observation from the 7-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP7) results, the baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) observation from the spectroscopic Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data release 7 (DR7) galaxy sample and the type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from Union2 set. The best-fit values of the model parameters are $\Omega_{m0}=0.27_{-0.02}^{+0.02}(1\sigma)_{-0.03}^{+0.04}(2\sigma)$, $\xi=3.15_{-0.50}^{+0.48}(1\sigma)_{-0.71}^{+0.72}(2\sigma)$, and $w_X=-1.05_{-0.14}^{+0.15}(1\sigma)_{-0.21}^{+0.21}(2\sigma)$, which are more stringent than previous results. These results show that the standard $\Lambda$CDM model without any interaction remains a good fit to the recent observational data; however, the interaction that the energy transferring from dark matter to dark energy is slightly favored over the interaction from dark energy to dark matter. It is also shown that the $H(z)$ data can give more stringent constraints on the phenomenological interacting scenario when combined to CMB and BAO observations, and the confidence regions of $H(z)$+BAO+CMB, SNe+BAO+CMB, and $H(z)$+SNe+BAO+CMB combinations are consistent with each other.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. MNRAS in pres

A multi-wavelength study of the gravitational lens COSMOS J095930+023427

We present a multi-wavelength study of the gravitational lens COSMOS J095930+023427 (z=0.89), together with the associated galaxy group located at $z\sim0.7$ along the line of sight and the lensed background galaxy. The source redshift is currently unknown, but estimated to be at $z_s \sim 2$. The analysis is based on the available public HST, Subaru, Chandra imaging data, and VLT spectroscopy. The lensing system is an early-type galaxy showing a strong [OII] emission line, and produces 4 bright images of the distant background source. It has an Einstein radius of 0.79", about 4 times large than the effective radius. We perform a lensing analysis using both a Singular Isothermal Ellipsoid (SIE) and a Peudo-Isothermal Elliptical Mass Distribution (PIEMD) for the lensing galaxy, and find that the final results on the total mass, the dark matter (DM) fraction within the Einstein radius and the external shear due to a foreground galaxy group are robust with respect of the choice of the parametric model and the source redshift (yet unknown). We measure the luminous mass from the photometric data, and find the DM fraction within the Einstein radius $f_{\rm DM}$ to be between $0.71\pm 0.13$ and $0.79 \pm 0.15$, depending on the unknown source redshift. Meanwhile, the non-null external shear found in our lensing models supports the presence and structure of a galaxy group at $z\sim0.7$, and an independent measurement of the 0.5-2 keV X-ray luminosity within 20" around the X-ray centroid provides a group mass of $M=(3-10)\times 10^{13}$ M$_{\odot}$, in good agreement with the previous estimate derived through weak lensing analysis.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Few-photon computed x-ray imaging

X-ray is a ubiquitous imaging modality in clinical diagnostics and industrial inspections, thanks to its high penetration power. Conventional x-ray imaging system, equipped with energy-integrating detectors, collects approximately 1000 to 10000 counts per pixel to ensure sufficient signal to noise ratio (SNR). The recent development of energy sensitive photon counting detectors opens new possibilities for x-ray imaging at low photon flux. In this letter, we report a novel photon-counting scheme that records the time stamp of individual photons, which follows a negative binomial distribution, and demonstrated the reconstruction based on the few-photon statistics. The projection and tomography reconstruction from measurements of roughly 10 photons shows the potential of using photon counting detectors for dose-efficient x-ray imaging systems.Comment: Revised manuscrip