Search

Strong gravitational lensing and microlensing of supernovae (SNe) are emerging as a new probe of cosmology and astrophysics in recent years. We provide an overview of this nascent research field, starting with a summary of the first discoveries of strongly lensed SNe. We describe the use of the time delays between multiple SN images as a way to measure cosmological distances and thus constrain cosmological parameters, particularly the Hubble constant, whose value is currently under heated debates. New methods for measuring the time delays in lensed SNe have been developed, and the sample of lensed SNe from the upcoming Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is expected to provide competitive cosmological constraints. Lensed SNe are also powerful astrophysical probes. We review the usage of lensed SNe to constrain SN progenitors, acquire high-z SN spectra through lensing magnifications, infer SN sizes via microlensing, and measure properties of dust in galaxies. The current challenge in the field is the rarity and difficulty in finding lensed SNe. We describe various methods and ongoing efforts to find these spectacular explosions, forecast the properties of the expected sample of lensed SNe from upcoming surveys particularly the LSST, and summarize the observational follow-up requirements to enable the various scientific studies. We anticipate the upcoming years to be exciting with a boom in lensed SN discoveries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the discovery of new lensed quasar candidates in the imaging data of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) Data Release 4, covering |$1\, 310\deg ^2$| of the sky with median seeing in the i band of ≈0.6 arcsec. In addition to two catalogues of Million Quasars Catalog v7.2 and AllWISE Catalog of Mid-Infra Red Active Galactic Nuclei, containing confirmed and candidate quasars, we preselect quasar sources using colour cuts from the HSC (grizy) and unWISE (W 1 + W 2) photometric data based on SDSS spectroscopic catalogues. We search for the presence of multiple point sources with similar colour through the convolution of the Laplacian of the preselected quasar image cutouts with the Laplacian of the point spread function, resulting in a reduction of lens candidates from 1 652 329 to 121 511 (7.4 per cent). After visual binary classification, we grade 6 199 (0.4 per cent) potential lenses on a scale of 0 to 3, with 3 indicating a lens and 0 indicating a non-lens. Finally we obtain 162 lens candidates with an average grade of ≥2, and among them, we successfully recover 18 known lenses. By fitting the light distribution and removing the known contaminants, we discover that 57 new systems contain at least two point sources and a galaxy in between, including 10 possible quadruply lensed quasars. This new sample exhibits a median separation of 1.26 arcsec and a magnitude limit of i ≈ 22. Spectroscopic or high-resolution imaging follow up on these newly discovered lensed quasar candidates will further allow their natures to be confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the evolution of galaxies provides crucial insights into a broad range of aspects in astrophysics, including structure formation and growth, the nature of dark energy and dark matter, baryonic physics, and more. It is, however, infeasible to track the evolutionary processes of individual galaxies in real time given their long timescales. As a result, galaxy evolution analyses have been mostly based on ensembles of galaxies that are supposed to be from the same population according to usually basic and crude observational criteria. We propose a new strategy of evaluating the evolution of an individual galaxy by identifying its descendant galaxies as guided by cosmological simulations. As a proof of concept, we examined the evolution of the total mass distribution of a target strong lensing galaxy at z = 0.884 using the proposed strategy. We selected 158 galaxies from the TNG300 simulation that we identified as analogs of the target galaxy. We followed their descendants and found 11 observed strong lensing galaxies that match in stellar mass and size with the descendants at their redshifts. The observed and simulated results are discussed, although no conclusive assessment is made given the low statistical significance due to the small sample size. Nevertheless, the test confirms that our proposed strategy is already feasible with existing data and simulations. We expect it to play an even more important role in studying galaxy evolution as more strong lens systems and larger simulations become available with the advent of next-generation survey programs and cosmological simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiply imaged time-variable sources can be used to measure absolute distances as a function of redshifts and thus determine cosmological parameters, chiefly the Hubble Constant H 0 . In the two decades up to 2020, through a number of observational and conceptual breakthroughs, this so-called time-delay cosmography has reached a precision sufficient to be an important independent voice in the current "Hubble tension" debate between early- and late-universe determinations of H 0 . The 2020s promise to deliver major advances in time-delay cosmography, owing to the large number of lenses to be discovered by new and upcoming surveys and the vastly improved capabilities for follow-up and analysis. In this review, after a brief summary of the foundations of the method and recent advances, we outline the opportunities for the decade and the challenges that will need to be overcome in order to meet the goal of the determination of H 0 from time-delay cosmography with 1% precision and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strongly lensed quasars can provide measurements of the Hubble constant (H 0) independent of any other methods. One of the key ingredients is exquisite high-resolution imaging data, such as Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging and adaptive-optics (AO) imaging from ground-based telescopes, which provide strong constraints on the mass distribution of the lensing galaxy. In this work, we expand on the previous analysis of three time-delay lenses with AO imaging (RX J1131−1231, HE 0435−1223, and PG 1115+080), and perform a joint analysis of J0924+0219 by using AO imaging from the Keck telescope, obtained as part of the Strong lensing at High Angular Resolution Program (SHARP) AO effort, with HST imaging to constrain the mass distribution of the lensing galaxy. Under the assumption of a flat Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model with fixed Ωm = 0.3, we show that by marginalizing over two different kinds of mass models (power-law and composite models) and their transformed mass profiles via a mass-sheet transformation, we obtain |$\Delta t_{\rm BA}=6.89\substack{+0.8\\-0.7}\, h^{-1}\hat{\sigma }_{v}^{2}$|  d, |$\Delta t_{\rm CA}=10.7\substack{+1.6\\-1.2}\, h^{-1}\hat{\sigma }_{v}^{2}$|  d, and |$\Delta t_{\rm DA}=7.70\substack{+1.0\\-0.9}\, h^{-1}\hat{\sigma }_{v}^{2}$|  d, where |$h=H_{0}/100\,\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}$| is the dimensionless Hubble constant and |$\hat{\sigma }_{v}=\sigma ^{\rm ob}_{v}/(280\,\rm km\, s^{-1})$| is the scaled dimensionless velocity dispersion. Future measurements of time delays with 10 per cent uncertainty and velocity dispersion with 5 per cent uncertainty would yield a H 0 constraint of ∼15 per cent precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges in using high-redshift active galactic nuclei (AGNs) to study the correlations between the mass of a supermassive black hole (⁠|$\mathcal {M}_{\rm BH}$|⁠) and the properties of its active host galaxy is instrumental resolution. Strong lensing magnification effectively increases instrumental resolution and thus helps to address this challenge. In this work, we study eight strongly lensed AGNs with deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging, using the lens modelling code lenstronomy to reconstruct the image of the source. Using the reconstructed brightness of the host galaxy, we infer the host galaxy stellar mass based on stellar population models. |$\mathcal {M}_{\rm BH}$| are estimated from broad emission lines using standard methods. Our results are in good agreement with recent work based on non-lensed AGNs, demonstrating the potential of using strongly lensed AGNs to extend the study of the correlations to higher redshifts. At the moment, the sample size of lensed AGNs is small and thus they provide mostly a consistency check on systematic errors related to resolution for non-lensed AGNs. However, the number of known lensed AGNs is expected to increase dramatically in the next few years, through dedicated searches in ground- and space-based wide-field surveys, and they may become a key diagnostic of black holes and galaxy co-evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a measurement of the Hubble constant (H 0) and other cosmological parameters from a joint analysis of six gravitationally lensed quasars with measured time delays. All lenses except the first are analysed blindly with respect to the cosmological parameters. In a flat Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmology, we find |$H_{0} = 73.3_{-1.8}^{+1.7}~\mathrm{km~s^{-1}~Mpc^{-1}}$|⁠ , a |$2.4{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$| precision measurement, in agreement with local measurements of H 0 from type Ia supernovae calibrated by the distance ladder, but in 3.1σ tension with Planck observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This method is completely independent of both the supernovae and CMB analyses. A combination of time-delay cosmography and the distance ladder results is in 5.3σ tension with Planck CMB determinations of H 0 in flat ΛCDM. We compute Bayes factors to verify that all lenses give statistically consistent results, showing that we are not underestimating our uncertainties and are able to control our systematics. We explore extensions to flat ΛCDM using constraints from time-delay cosmography alone, as well as combinations with other cosmological probes, including CMB observations from Planck , baryon acoustic oscillations, and type Ia supernovae. Time-delay cosmography improves the precision of the other probes, demonstrating the strong complementarity. Allowing for spatial curvature does not resolve the tension with Planck. Using the distance constraints from time-delay cosmography to anchor the type Ia supernova distance scale, we reduce the sensitivity of our H 0 inference to cosmological model assumptions. For six different cosmological models, our combined inference on H 0 ranges from ∼73 to 78 km s−1 Mpc−1, which is consistent with the local distance ladder constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the lens mass model of the quadruply-imaged gravitationally lensed quasar WFI2033 − 4723, and perform a blind cosmographical analysis based on this system. Our analysis combines (1) time-delay measurements from 14 yr of data obtained by the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses (COSMOGRAIL) collaboration, (2) high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging, (3) a measurement of the velocity dispersion of the lens galaxy based on ESO-MUSE data, and (4) multi-band, wide-field imaging and spectroscopy characterizing the lens environment. We account for all known sources of systematics, including the influence of nearby perturbers and complex line-of-sight structure, as well as the parametrization of the light and mass profiles of the lensing galaxy. After unblinding, we determine the effective time-delay distance to be |$4784_{-248}^{+399}~\mathrm{Mpc}$|⁠ , an average precision of |$6.6{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$|⁠. This translates to a Hubble constant |$H_{0} = 71.6_{-4.9}^{+3.8}~\mathrm{km~s^{-1}~Mpc^{-1}}$|⁠ , assuming a flat ΛCDM cosmology with a uniform prior on Ωm in the range [0.05, 0.5]. This work is part of the H 0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LiCOW) collaboration, and the full time-delay cosmography results from a total of six strongly lensed systems are presented in a companion paper (H0LiCOW XIII). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the largest sample of candidate strong gravitational lenses belonging to the Survey of Gravitationally lensed Objects in HSC Imaging for group-to-cluster scale (SuGOHI-c) systems. These candidates are compiled from the S18A data release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC–SSP) Survey. We visually inspect ∼39 500 galaxy clusters, selected from several catalogues, overlapping with the Wide, Deep, and UltraDeep fields, spanning the cluster redshift range of 0.05 < z cl < 1.38. We discover 641 candidate lens systems, of which 536 are new. From the full sample, 47 are almost certainly bona fide lenses, 181 of them are highly probable lenses, and 413 are possible lens systems. Additionally, we present 131 lens candidates at galaxy scale serendipitously discovered during the inspection. We obtained spectroscopic follow-up of 10 candidates using the X-shooter. With this follow-up, we confirm eight systems as strong gravitational lenses. Of the remaining two, one of the sources is too faint to detect any emission, and the other has a tentative redshift close to the lens redshift, but additional arcs in this system are yet to be observed spectroscopically. Since the HSC–SSP is an ongoing survey, we expect to find ∼600 definite or probable lenses using this procedure and even more if combined with other lens finding methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the serendipitous discovery of HSC J0904–0102, a quadruply lensed Lyman-break galaxy (LBG) in the Survey of Gravitationally-lensed Objects in Hyper Suprime-Cam Imaging (SuGOHI). Owing to its point-like appearance, the source was thought to be a lensed active galactic nucleus. We obtained follow-up spectroscopic data with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrographs on the Gemini South Telescope, which confirmed this to be a lens system. The deflecting foreground galaxy is a typical early-type galaxy at a high redshift of |$z_{\ell}=0.957$| with stellar velocity dispersion |$\sigma_v=259\pm56$|  km s−1. The lensed source is identified as an LBG at |$z_{\rm s}=3.403$|⁠ , based on the sharp drop bluewards of Ly α and other absorption features. A simple lens mass model for the system, assuming a singular isothermal ellipsoid, yields an Einstein radius of |$\theta_{\rm Ein}=1.23$| arcsec and a total mass within the Einstein radius of |$M_{\rm Ein}=(5.55\pm0.24)\times10^{11}\rm M_{\odot}$| corresponding to a velocity dispersion of |$\sigma_{\rm SIE}=283\pm3$|  km s−1, which is in good agreement with the value derived spectroscopically. The most isolated lensed LBG image has a magnification of |$\sim 6.5$|⁠. In comparison with other lensed LBGs and typical |$z\sim4$| LBG populations, HSC J0904–0102 is unusually compact, an outlier at |$>2\sigma$| confidence. Together with a previously discovered SuGOHI lens, HSC J1152+0047, which is similarly compact, we believe that the HSC survey is extending LBG studies down to smaller galaxy sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a joint strong lensing and stellar dynamical framework for future time-delay cosmography purposes. Based on a pixelated source reconstruction and the axisymmetric Jeans equations, we are capable of constraining cosmological distances and hence the current expansion rate of the Universe (H 0) to the few per cent level per lens, when high signal-to-noise integral field unit (IFU) observations from the next generation of telescopes become available. For illustrating the power of this method, we mock up IFU stellar kinematic data of the prominent lens system RXJ1131−1231, given the specifications of the James Webb Space Telescope. Our analysis shows that the time-delay distance (D Δ t ) can be constrained with 3.1 per cent uncertainty at best, if future IFU stellar kinematics are included in the fit and if the set of candidate model parametrizations contains the true lens potential. These constraints would translate to a 3.2 per cent precision measurement on H 0 in flat ΛCDM cosmology from the single lens RXJ1131−1231, and can be expected to yield an H 0 measure with ≤2.0 per cent uncertainty, if similar gains in precision can be reached for two additional lens systems. Moreover, the angular diameter distance (D d) to RXJ1131−1231 can be constrained with 2.4 per cent precision, providing two distance measurements from a single lens system, which is extremely powerful to further constrain the matter density (Ωm). The measurement accuracy of D d, however, is highly sensitive to any systematics in the measurement of the stellar kinematics. For both distance measurements, we strongly advise to probe a large set of physically motivated lens potentials in the future, to minimize the systematic errors associated with the lens mass parametrization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the measurement of the Hubble constant, H 0, with three strong gravitational lens systems. We describe a blind analysis of both PG 1115+080 and HE 0435−1223 as well as an extension of our previous analysis of RXJ 1131−1231. For each lens, we combine new adaptive optics (AO) imaging from the Keck Telescope, obtained as part of the SHARP (Strong-lensing High Angular Resolution Programme) AO effort, with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging, velocity dispersion measurements, and a description of the line-of-sight mass distribution to build an accurate and precise lens mass model. This mass model is then combined with the COSMOGRAIL-measured time delays in these systems to determine H 0. We do both an AO-only and an AO + HST analysis of the systems and find that AO and HST results are consistent. After unblinding, the AO-only analysis gives |$H_{0}=82.8^{+9.4}_{-8.3}~\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}$| for PG 1115+080, |$H_{0}=70.1^{+5.3}_{-4.5}~\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}$| for HE 0435−1223, and |$H_{0}=77.0^{+4.0}_{-4.6}~\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}$| for RXJ 1131−1231. The joint AO-only result for the three lenses is |$H_{0}=75.6^{+3.2}_{-3.3}~\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}$|⁠. The joint result of the AO + HST analysis for the three lenses is |$H_{0}=76.8^{+2.6}_{-2.6}~\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}$|⁠. All of these results assume a flat Λ cold dark matter cosmology with a uniform prior on Ωm in [0.05, 0.5] and H 0 in [0, 150] |$\rm km\, s^{-1}\, Mpc^{-1}$|⁠. This work is a collaboration of the SHARP and H0LiCOW teams, and shows that AO data can be used as the high-resolution imaging component in lens-based measurements of H 0. The full time-delay cosmography results from a total of six strongly lensed systems are presented in a companion paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-delay strong lensing provides a unique way to directly measure the Hubble constant (H 0). The precision of the H 0 measurement depends on the uncertainties in the time-delay measurements, the mass distribution of the main deflector(s), and the mass distribution along the line of sight. Tie & Kochanek have proposed a new microlensing effect on time delays based on differential magnification of the coherent accretion disc variability of the lensed quasar. If real, this effect could significantly broaden the uncertainty on the time-delay measurements by up to 30 per cent for lens systems such as PG 1115+080, which have relatively short time delays and monitoring over several different epochs. In this paper we develop a new technique that uses the cosmological time-delay ratios and simulated microlensing maps within a Bayesian framework in order to limit the allowed combinations of microlensing delays and thus to lessen the uncertainties due to the proposed effect. We show that, under the assumption of Tie & Kochanek, the uncertainty on the time-delay distance (D Δ t , which is proportional to 1/ H 0) of the short time-delay (∼18 d) lens, PG 1115+080, increases from ∼7 per cent to ∼10 per cent by simultaneously fitting the three time-delay measurements from the three different data sets across 20 yr, while in the case of the long time-delay (∼90 d) lens, the microlensing effect on time delays is negligible as the uncertainty on D Δ t of RXJ 1131−1231 only increases from ∼2.5 per cent to ∼2.6 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the discovery of the quadruply lensed quasar SDSS J1433+6007 (RA =14:33:22.8, Dec.=+60:07:13.44), mined in the SDSS DR12 photometric catalogues using a novel outlierselection technique, without prior spectroscopic or ultraviolet excess information. Discovery data obtained at the Nordic Optical Telescope (La Palma) show nearly identical quasar spectra at zs = 2.737 ± 0.003 and four quasar images in a fold configuration, one of which sits on a blue arc, with maximum separation 3.6 arcsec. The deflector redshift is zl = 0.407 ± 0.002, from Keck-ESI spectra. We describe the selection procedure, discovery and follow-up, image positions and BVRi magnitudes, and first results and forecasts from lens model fit to the relative image positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC SSP) is an excellent survey for the search for strong lenses, thanks to its area, image quality and depth. We use three different methods to look for lenses among 43,000 luminous red galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) sample with photometry from the S16A internal data release of the HSC SSP. The first method is a newly developed algorithm, named YATTALENS, which looks for arc-like features around massive galaxies and then estimates the likelihood of an object being a lens by performing a lens model fit. The second method, CHITAH, is a modeling-based algorithm originally developed to look for lensed quasars. The third method makes use of spectroscopic data to look for emission lines from objects at a different redshift from that of the main galaxy. We find 15 definite lenses, 36 highly probable lenses and 282 possible lenses. Among the three methods, YATTALENS, which was developed specifically for this problem, performs best in terms of both completeness and purity. Nevertheless five highly probable lenses were missed by YATTALENS but found by the other two methods, indicating that the three methods are highly complementary. Based on these numbers we expect to find ∼300 definite or probable lenses by the end of the HSC SSP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strongly lensed active galactic nuclei (AGN) provide a unique opportunity to make progress in the study of the evolution of the correlation between the mass of supermassive black holes (MBH) and their host galaxy luminosity (Lhost). We demonstrate the power of lensing by analysing two systems for which state-of-the-art lens modelling techniques have been applied to deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging data. We use (i) the reconstructed images to infer the total and bulge luminosity of the host and (ii) published broad-line spectroscopy to estimate MBH using the so-called virial method. We then enlarge our sample with new calibration of previously published measurements to study the evolution of the correlation out to z ∼ 4.5. Consistent with previous work, we find that without taking into account passive luminosity evolution, the data points lie on the local relation. Once the passive luminosity evolution is taken into account, we find that black holes in the more distant Universe reside in less luminous galaxies than today. Fitting this offset as MBH/Lhost ∼ (1 + z)γ, and taking into account selection effects, we obtain γ = 0.6 ± 0.1 and 0.8 ± 0.1 for the case of MBH-Lbulge and MBH-Ltotal, respectively. To test for systematic uncertainties and selection effects we also consider a reduced sample that is homogeneous in data quality. We find consistent results but with considerably larger uncertainty due to the more limited sample size and redshift coverage (γ = 0.7 ± 0.4 and 0.2 ± 0.5 for MBH-Lbulge and MBH-Ltotal, respectively), highlighting the need to gather more high-quality data for high-redshift lensed quasar hosts. Our result is consistent with a scenario where the growth of the black hole predates that of the host galaxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hubble constant is a key cosmological parameter that sets the present-day expansion rate as well as the age, size, and critical density of the Universe. Intriguingly, there is currently a tension in the measurements of its value in the standard flat ΛCDM model – observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background with the Planck satellite lead to a value of the Hubble constant that is lower than the measurements from the local Cepheids-supernovae distance ladder and strong gravitational lensing. Precise and accurate Hubble constant measurements from independent probes, including water masers, are necessary to assess the significance of this tension and the possible need of new physics beyond the current standard cosmological model. We present the progress toward an accurate Hubble constant determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong gravitational lenses with measured time delays between the multiple images allow a direct measurement of the time-delay distance to the lens, and thus a measure of cosmological parameters, particularly the Hubble constant, H0. We present a blind lens model analysis of the quadruply imaged quasar lens HE 0435-1223 using deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging, updated time-delay measurements from the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses (COSMOGRAIL), a measurement of the velocity dispersion of the lens galaxy based on Keck data, and a characterization of the mass distribution along the line of sight. HE 0435-1223 is the third lens analysed as a part of the H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LiCOW) project. We account for various sources of systematic uncertainty, including the detailed treatment of nearby perturbers, the parametrization of the galaxy light and mass profile, and the regions used for lens modelling. We constrain the effective time-delay distance to be DΔt=2612-191+208Mpc, a precision of 7.6 per cent. From HE 0435-1223 alone, we infer a Hubble constant of H0=73.1-6.0+5.7kms-1Mpc-1 assuming a flat ΛCDM cosmology. The cosmographic inference based on the three lenses analysed by H0LiCOW to date is presented in a companion paper (H0LiCOW Paper V). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical correlation between the mass of a supermassive black hole (MBH) and its host galaxy properties is widely considered to be an evidence of their co-evolution. A powerful way to test the co-evolution scenario and learn about the feedback processes linking galaxies and nuclear activity is to measure these correlations as a function of redshift. Unfortunately, currently MBH can only be estimated in active galaxies at cosmological distances. At these distances, bright active galactic nuclei (AGNs) can outshine the host galaxy, making it extremely difficult to measure the host's luminosity. Strongly lensed AGNs provide in principle a great opportunity to improve the sensitivity and accuracy of the host galaxy luminosity measurements as the host galaxy is magnified and more easily separated from the point source, provided the lens model is sufficiently accurate. In order to measure the MBH -L correlation with strong lensing, it is necessary to ensure that the lens modelling is accurate, and that the host galaxy luminosity can be recovered to at least a precision and accuracy better than that of the typical MBH measurement. We carry out extensive and realistic simulations of deep Hubble Space Telescope observations of lensed AGNs obtained by our collaboration. We show that the host galaxy luminosity can be recovered with better accuracy and precision than the typical uncertainty in MBH (~0.5 dex) for hosts as faint as 2-4 mag dimmer than the AGN itself. Our simulations will be used to estimate bias and uncertainties in the actual measurements to be presented in a future paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the serendipitous discovery of a quadruply lensed source at zs = 3.76, HSC J115252+004733, from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Survey. The source is lensed by an early-type galaxy at zl = 0.466 and a satellite galaxy. Here, we investigate the properties of the source by studying its size and luminosity from the imaging and the luminosity and velocity width of the Ly-a line from the spectrum. Our analyses suggest that the source is most probably a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus (LLAGN) but the possibility of it being a compact bright galaxy (e.g. a Lyman-a emitter or lyman break galaxy) cannot be excluded. The brighter pair of lensed images appears point-like except in the HSC i band (with a seeing ~0.5 arcsec). The extended emission in the i-band image could be due to the host galaxy underneath the AGN, or alternatively, due to a highly compact lensed galaxy (without AGN) which appears point-like in all bands except in i band. We also find that the flux ratio of the brighter pair of images is different in the Ks band compared to opticalwavelengths. Phenomena such as differential extinction and intrinsic variability cannot explain this chromatic variation. While microlensing from stars in the foreground galaxy is less likely to be the cause, it cannot be ruled out completely. If the galaxy hosts an AGN, then this represents the highest redshift quadruply imaged AGN known to date, enabling study of a distant LLAGN. Discovery of this unusually compact and faint source demonstrates the potential of the HSC survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and precise measurements of the Hubble constant are critical for testing our current standard cosmological model and revealing possibly new physics. With Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging, each strong gravitational lens system with measured time delays can allow one to determine the Hubble constant with an uncertainty of ∼7 per cent. Since HST will not last forever, we explore adaptive-optics (AO) imaging as an alternative that can provide higher angular resolution than HST imaging but has a less stable point spread function (PSF) due to atmospheric distortion. To make AO imaging useful for time-delay-lens cosmography, we develop a method to extract the unknown PSF directly from the imaging of strongly lensed quasars. In a blind test with two mock data sets created with different PSFs, we are able to recover the important cosmological parameters (time-delay distance, external shear, lens-mass profile slope, and total Einstein radius). Our analysis of the Keck AO image of the strong lens system RXJ 1131−1231 shows that the important parameters for cosmography agree with those based on HST imaging and modelling within 1σ uncertainties. Most importantly, the constraint on the model time-delay distance by using AO imaging with 0.09 arcsec resolution is tighter by ∼50 per cent than the constraint of time-delay distance by using HST imaging with 0.09 arcsec when a power-law mass distribution for the lens system is adopted. Our PSF reconstruction technique is generic and applicable to data sets that have multiple nearby point sources, enabling scientific studies that require high-precision models of the PSF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present spectroscopy and laser guide star adaptive optics (LGSAO) images of the doubly imaged lensed quasar SDSS J1206+4332. We revise the deflector redshift proposed previously to zd = 0.745, and measure for the first time its velocity dispersion σ = (290 ± 30) km s-1. The LGSAO data show the lensed quasar host galaxy stretching over the astroid caustic thus forming an extra pair of merging images, which was previously thought to be an unrelated galaxy in seeing limited data. Owing to the peculiar geometry, the lens acts as a natural coronagraph on the broad-line region of the quasar so that only narrow CIII]emission is found in the fold arc. We use the data to reconstruct the source structure and deflector potential, including nearby perturbers. We reconstruct the point-spread function (PSF) from the quasar images themselves, since no additional point source is present in the field of view. From gravitational lensing and stellar dynamics, we find the slope of the total mass density profile to be γ' = -log??/log?r = 1.93 ± 0.09. We discuss the potential of SDSS J1206+4332 for measuring a time-delay distance (and thus H0 and other cosmological parameters), or as a standard ruler, in combination with the time-delay published by the COSMOGRAIL collaboration. We conclude that this system is very promising for cosmography. However, in order to achieve competitive precision and accuracy, an independent characterization of the PSF is needed. Spatially resolved kinematics of the deflector would reduce the uncertainties further. Both are within the reach of current observational facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High precision cosmological distance measurements towards individual objects such as time delay gravitational lenses or Type Ia supernovae are affected by weak lensing perturbations by galaxies and groups along the line of sight. In time delay gravitational lenses, ‘external convergence’, κext, can dominate the uncertainty in the inferred distances and hence cosmological parameters. In this paper we attempt to reconstruct κext, due to line of sight structure, using a simple halo model. We use mock catalogues from the Millennium Simulation, and calibrate and compare our reconstructed P(κext) to ray-traced κext ‘truth’ values; taking into account realistic uncertainties on redshift and stellar masses. We find that the reconstruction of κext provides an improvement in precision of ∼50 per cent over galaxy number counts. We find that the lowest κext lines of sight have the best constrained P(κext). In anticipation of future samples with thousands of lenses, we find that selecting the third of the systems with the highest precision κext estimates gives a subsample of unbiased time delay distance measurements with (on average) just 1 per cent uncertainty due to line of sight external convergence effects. Photometric data alone are sufficient to pre-select the best-constrained lines of sight, and can be done before investment in light-curve monitoring. Conversely, we show that selecting lines of sight with high external shear could, with the reconstruction model presented here, induce biases of up to 1 per cent in time delay distance. We find that a major potential source of systematic error is uncertainty in the high-mass end of the stellar mass–halo mass relation; this could introduce ∼2 per cent biases on the time delay distance if completely ignored. We suggest areas for the improvement of this general analysis framework (including more sophisticated treatment of high-mass structures) that should allow yet more accurate cosmological inferences to be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an overview of a deep transient survey of the COSMOS field with the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC). The survey was performed for the 1.77 deg2 ultra-deep layer and 5.78 deg2 deep layer in the Subaru Strategic Program over six- and four-month periods from 2016 to 2017, respectively. The ultra-deep layer reaches a median depth per epoch of 26.4, 26.3, 26.0, 25.6, and 24.6 mag in g, r, i, z , and y bands, respectively; the deep layer is ∼0.6 mag shallower. In total, 1824 supernova candidates were identified. Based on light-curve fitting and derived light-curve shape parameter, we classified 433 objects as Type Ia supernovae (SNe); among these candidates, 129 objects have spectroscopic or COSMOS2015 photometric redshifts and 58 objects are located at z > 1. Our unique data set doubles the number of Type Ia SNe at z > 1 and enables various time-domain analyses of Type II SNe, high-redshift superluminous SNe, variable stars, and active galactic nuclei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights from the article: Searching for the 380 GHz H 2 O emission from the high- z lensed quasi-stellar object MG J0414+0534. Maser emissions, MG J0414+0534 will become the first Maser spectrum of the nearby maser galaxy NGC 1052, A1 and A2, the maser clumps represented by the filled Lens model that is designed to explain the maser flux ratio.

We present the lens mass model of the quadruply-imaged gravitationally lensed quasar WFI2033 − 4723, and perform a blind cosmographical analysis based on this system. Our analysis combines (1) time-delay measurements from 14 yr of data obtained by the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses (COSMOGRAIL) collaboration, (2) high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope imaging, (3) a measurement of the velocity dispersion of the lens galaxy based on ESO-MUSE data, and (4) multi-band, wide-field imaging and spectroscopy characterizing the lens environment. We account for all known sources of systematics, including the influence of nearby perturbers and complex line-of-sight structure, as well as the parametrization of the light and mass profiles of the lensing galaxy. After unblinding, we determine the effective time-delay distance to be |$4784_{-248}^{+399}~\mathrm{Mpc}$|⁠ , an average precision of |$6.6{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$|⁠. This translates to a Hubble constant |$H_{0} = 71.6_{-4.9}^{+3.8}~\mathrm{km~s^{-1}~Mpc^{-1}}$|⁠ , assuming a flat ΛCDM cosmology with a uniform prior on Ωm in the range [0.05, 0.5]. This work is part of the H 0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LiCOW) collaboration, and the full time-delay cosmography results from a total of six strongly lensed systems are presented in a companion paper (H0LiCOW XIII). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]