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Improved mass constraints for two nearby strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging

Collier, William P.; Smith, Russell J.; Lucey, John R.

Improved mass constraints for two nearby strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Thumbnail


Authors

William P. Collier



Abstract

We analyse newly obtained Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging for two nearby strong lensing elliptical galaxies, SNL-1 (z = 0.03) and SNL-2 (z = 0.05), in order to improve the lensing mass constraints. The imaging reveals previously unseen structure in both the lens galaxies and lensed images. For SNL-1 which has a well resolved source, we break the mass-vs-shear degeneracy using the relative magnification information, and measure a lensing mass of 9.49 ± 0.15 × 1010 M⊙, a 7 per cent increase on the previous estimate. For SNL-2 the imaging reveals a bright unresolved component to the source and this presents additional complexity due to possible AGN microlensing or variability. We tentatively use the relative magnification information to constrain the contribution from SNL-2’s nearby companion galaxy, measuring a lensing mass of 12.59 ± 0.30 × 1010 M⊙, a 9 per cent increase in mass. Our improved lens modelling reduces the mass uncertainty from 5 and 10 per cent to 2 and 3 per cent respectively. Our results support the conclusions of the previous analysis, with newly measured mass excess parameters of 1.17 ± 0.09 and 0.96 ± 0.10 for SNL-1 and SNL-2, relative to a Milky-Way like (Kroupa) initial mass function.

Citation

Collier, W. P., Smith, R. J., & Lucey, J. R. (2017). Improved mass constraints for two nearby strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 473(1), 1103-1107. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2297

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 1, 2017
Online Publication Date Sep 7, 2017
Publication Date Sep 7, 2017
Deposit Date Sep 12, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 473
Issue 1
Pages 1103-1107
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2297
Related Public URLs https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01931

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Accepted Journal Article (715 Kb)
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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2017. The Authors.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.






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