Gravitational Lens Time Delays: A Statistical Assessment of Lens Model Dependences and Implications for the Global Hubble Constant

By M. Oguri. 2006

166 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Time delays between lensed multiple images have been known to provide an interesting probe of the Hubble constant, but such an application is often limited by degeneracies with the shape of lens potentials. We propose a new statistical approach to examine the dependence of time delays on the complexity of lens potentials, such as higher order perturbations, nonisothermality, and substructures. Specifically, we introduce a dimensionless reduced time delay and explore its behavior analytically and numerically as a function of the image configuration, which is characterized by the asymmetry and opening angle of the image pair. In particular, we derive a realistic conditional probability distribution for a given image configuration from Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the probability distribution is sensitive to the image configuration such that more symmetric and/or smaller opening-angle image pairs are more easily affected by perturbations on the primary lens potential. On average time delays of double lenses are less scattered than those of quadruple lenses. Furthermore, the realistic conditional distribution allows a new statistical method to constrain the Hubble constant from observed time delays. We find that 16 published time delay quasars constrain H0 to be 70 ± 6 km s-1 Mpc-1, where the value and its error are estimated using jackknife resampling. Systematic errors coming from the heterogeneous nature of the quasar sample and the uncertainty of the input distribution of lens potentials can be larger than the statistical error. After including rough estimates of important systematic errors, we find H0 = 68 ± 6(stat.) ± 8(syst.) km s-1 Mpc-1. The reasonable agreement of the value of the Hubble constant with other estimates indicates the usefulness of our new approach as a cosmological and astrophysical probe, particularly in the era of large-scale synoptic surveys.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/82e792bd0d2797f7bc051458531c434171c49de7

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Citations in the corpus

Time delay cosmography (2016, methodology): “A number of attempts along these lines have been made (Oguri 2007; Rathna Kumar et al. 2015), and it is easy to imagine that this solution will be popular in the future, when large samples of lenses with measured time delays will be available.”
THE SLOAN LENS ACS SURVEY. X. STELLAR, DYNAMICAL, AND TOTAL MASS CORRELATIONS OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2010, background): “From the point of view of grav- itational lensing studies, the distribution of γ′ is an essential piece of information for inferences regarding, e.g., cosmological parameters from gravitational time delays and lens statistics (e.g., Suyu et al. 2009; Dobke & King 2006; Oguri 2007).”
Gravitationally lensed quasars and supernovae in future wide-field optical imaging surveys (2010, methodology): “We follow the methodology proposed by Oguri (2007a) to combine a number of time-delay measurements.”
H0LiCOW - IV. Lens mass model of HE 0435-1223 and blind measurement of its time-delay distance for cosmology (2016, background): “…the Hubble constant (e.g., Vanderriest et al. 1989; Keeton & Kochanek 1997; Schechter et al. 1997; Kochanek 2003; Koopmans et al. 2003; Saha et al. 2006; Oguri 2007; Fadely et al. 2010; Suyu et al. 2010, 2013; Sereno & Paraficz 2014; Rathna Kumar et al. 2015; Birrer et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2016).”
SEVEN-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE (WMAP) OBSERVATIONS: COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION (2010, methodology): “Future prospects of the time-delay method are also discussed in Oguri (2007); Coe & Moustakas (2009).”
TDCOSMO IV: Hierarchical time-delay cosmography -- joint inference of the Hubble constant and galaxy density profiles (2020, background): “…(Vanderriest et al. 1989; Keeton & Kochanek 1997; Schechter et al. 1997; Kochanek 2003; Koopmans et al. 2003; Saha et al. 2006; Read et al. 2007; Oguri 2007; Coles 2008; Vuissoz et al. 2008; Suyu et al. 2010, 2013, 2014; Fadely et al. 2010; Sereno & Paraficz 2014; Rathna et al. 2015; Birrer et…”
H0LiCOW – XIII. A 2.4 per cent measurement of H0 from lensed quasars: 5.3σ tension between early- and late-Universe probes (2019, background): “…in this manner (e.g. Vanderriest et al. 1989; Keeton & Kochanek 1997; Schechter et al. 1997; Kochanek 2003; Koopmans et al. 2003; Saha et al. 2006; Oguri 2007; Vuissoz et al. 2008; Fadely et al. 2010; Suyu et al. 2010, 2013; Sereno & Paraficz 2014; Rathna Kumar, Stalin & Prabhu 2015; Birrer,…”
H0LiCOW – IX. Cosmographic analysis of the doubly imaged quasar SDSS 1206+4332 and a new measurement of the Hubble constant (2018, methodology): “A statistical approach to examine the dependence of time delays on the complexity of lens potentials based on a sample of 16 lensed quasars has been performed by Oguri (2007) and resulted in a Hubble parameter of H0 = 68±6 (stat.)”
DISSECTING THE GRAVITATIONAL LENS B1608+656. II. PRECISION MEASUREMENTS OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT, SPATIAL CURVATURE, AND THE DARK ENERGY EQUATION OF STATE (2009, methodology): “…cosmology is within ∼ 0.1% of the listed values. the ensemble external convergence distribution has zero mean, which may not be accurate: for example, Oguri (2007) constructed a sample for which external convergence could be neglected, and then incorporated this into the systematic error budget.”
Gravitational lensing (2010, background): “In a detailed analysis including various deviations from idealized lens models, in [368] we find H0 = (68±10) km s−1 Mpc−1 including systematic errors.”