Measuring Weak Lensing of a Multiply Imaged Quasar

Date
2005
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Swarthmore College. Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
Type
Thesis (B.A.)
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
en_US
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Terms of Use
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
A gravitational lens bends the light from a source, distorting the morphology. Further, if the lens is sufficiently strong, this distortion can produce multiple images of the original source. With multiple images that have a known time delay, one can calculate Hubble's constant. However, there is some difficulty in doing so because one needs to accurately describe the mass distribution of the lens system. One such source is 0957+561 , a gravitationally lensed quasar with two resolvable images, one of which has an extended, polarized jet. Unlike the morphology, the intrinsic polarization of the jet is unchanged by gravitational lensing. We therefore predicted the deviation of the polarization from the observed morphology of the jet due to weak lensing. By simulating King, de Vaucouleurs, softened isothermal sphere (SIS), and Navarro, Frenk, and White (NFW) mass profiles for the lensing galaxy, we quantified the sensitivity of the observed lensing signal to these different models. We then combined this with the amount of mass that must be interior to the two images, which we calculated to be 8.3 * 1012 M0 using strong lensing. We found that the King and SIS profiles were consistent with the data, while the cuspy profiles, de Vaucouleurs and NFW, were inconsistent with the data. This technique of using both strong and weak lensing can be applied to any source with multiple images and a jet with adequate polarization.
Description
Subjects
Citation