STRIDES: Automated uniform models for 30 quadruply imaged quasars

DES Collaboration

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

Gravitational time delays provide a powerful one-step measurement of H0, independent of all other probes. One key ingredient in time-delay cosmography are high-accuracy lens models. Those are currently expensive to obtain, both, in terms of computing and investigator time (105-106 CPU hours and ∼0.5-1 yr, respectively). Major improvements in modelling speed are therefore necessary to exploit the large number of lenses that are forecast to be discovered over the current decade. In order to bypass this roadblock, we develop an automated modelling pipeline and apply it to a sample of 31 lens systems, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in multiple bands. Our automated pipeline can derive models for 30/31 lenses with few hours of human time and <100 CPU hours of computing time for a typical system. For each lens, we provide measurements of key parameters and predictions of magnification as well as time delays for the multiple images. We characterize the cosmography-readiness of our models using the stability of differences in the Fermat potential (proportional to time delay) with respect to modelling choices. We find that for 10/30 lenses, our models are cosmography or nearly cosmography grade (<3 per cent and 3-5 per cent variations). For 6/30 lenses, the models are close to cosmography grade (5-10 per cent). These results utilize informative priors and will need to be confirmed by further analysis. However, they are also likely to improve by extending the pipeline modelling sequence and options. In conclusion, we show that uniform cosmography grade modelling of large strong lens samples is within reach.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1260-1300
Number of pages41
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume518
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2023

Funding

This research is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with programs HST-GO-15320 and HST-GO-15652. Support for the two programs was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. TS, TT, and CDF acknowledge support by the the National Science Foundation through grants NSF-AST-1906976 and NSF- AST-1907396 'Collaborati ve Research: To ward a 1 per cent mea- surement of the Hubble Constant with gravitational time delays'. TT acknowledges support by the Packard Foundation through a Packard Research Fellowship. Support for this w ork w as provided by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST -HF2- 51492 awarded to AJS by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. This programme is in part supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation pro- gramme (COSMICLENS: grant agreement No. 787886). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (COSMICLENS: grant agreement No. 787886). The authors acknowledge the data and feedback provided by E. Glikman and C. E. Rusu. AA's work is funded by Villum Experiment Grant Cosmic Beacons (project number 36225). TA acknowledges support from FONDECYT Regular 1190335, the Millennium Science Initiative ICN12 009, and the ANID BASAL project FB210003. MWA-W acknowledges support from the Kavli Foundation. CS is supported by an 'Hintze Fellow' at the Oxford Centre for Astrophysical Surv e ys, which is funded through generous support from the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation. RGM would like to acknowledge the support of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). IK is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K04016. VM acknowledges support from project 'Fortalecimiento del Sistema de Investigaci\u00F3n e Innovaci\u00F3n de la Universidad de Valpara\u00EDso (UVA20993)'. SE, SS, and SHS thank the Max Planck Society for support through the Max Planck Research Group for SHS. This research is supported in part by the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsge- meinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy -EXC-2094-390783311. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the US Depart- ment of Energy, the US National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UK, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Funda\u00E7\u00E3o Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo \u00E0 Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient\u00EDfico e Tecnol\u00F3gico and the Minist\u00E9rio da Ci\u00EAncia, Tecnologia e Inova\u00E7\u00E3o, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Insti- tutions in the Dark Energy Surv e y. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cam- bridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energ\u00E9ticas, Medioambientales y Tecnol\u00F3gicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Ed- inburgh, the Eidgen\u00F6ssische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Z\u00FCrich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ci\u00E8ncies de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de F\u00EDsica d'Altes Energies, La wrence Berkele y National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universit\u00E4t M\u00FCnchen and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michi- gan, NSF's NOIRLab, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford Uni versity, the Uni versity of Sussex, Texas A&M University, and the OzDES Membership Consortium. This paper is based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory at NSF's NOIRLab (NOIRLab Prop. ID 2012B-0001; PI: J. Frieman), which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The DES data management system is supported by the Na- tional Science Foundation under Grant Numbers AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MICINN under grants ESP2017-89838, PGC2018-094773, PGC2018-102021, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016- 0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Se venth Frame work Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329, and 306478. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ci\u00EAncia e Tecnologia (INCT) do e-Universo (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2). This paper has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics. This research made use of LENSTRONOMY (Birrer & Amara 2018 ), EMCEE (F oreman-Macke y et al. 2013 ), FASTELL (Barkana 1998 ), SE XTRACTOR (Bertin & Arnouts 1996 ), NUMPY (Harris et al. 2020 ), SCIPY (Virtanen et al. 2020 ), ASTROPY (Astropy Collaboration 2018 ), JUPYTER (Kluyver et al. 2016 ), MATPLOTLIB (Hunter 2007 ), SEABORN (Waskom 2021 ), CORNER (F oreman-Macke y 2016 ), and DRAW.IO at https://www.draw.io.

Keywords

  • distance scale
  • gravitational lensing: strong
  • quasars: general

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