Inner dark matter distribution of the Cosmic Horseshoe (J1148+1930) with gravitational lensing and dynamics

S. Schuldt, G. Chirivì, S. H. Suyu, A. Ylldlrlm, A. Sonnenfeld, A. Halkola, G. F. Lewis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of the inner mass structure of the Cosmic Horseshoe (J1148+1930) strong gravitational lens system observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). In addition to the spectacular Einstein ring, this systems shows a radial arc. We obtained the redshift of the radial arc counterimage zs,r = 1.961 ± 0.001 from Gemini observations. To disentangle the dark and luminous matter, we considered three different profiles for the dark matter (DM) distribution: a power law profile, the Navarro, Frenk, and White (NFW) profile, and a generalized version of the NFW profile. For the luminous matter distribution, we based the model on the observed light distribution that is fitted with three components: a point mass for the central light component resembling an active galactic nucleus, and the remaining two extended light components scaled by a constant mass-to-light ratio (M/L). To constrain the model further, we included published velocity dispersion measurements of the lens galaxy and performed a self-consistent lensing and axisymmetric Jeans dynamical modeling. Our model fits well to the observations including the radial arc, independent of the DM profile. Depending on the DM profile, we get a DM fraction between 60% and 70%. With our composite mass model we find that the radial arc helps to constrain the inner DM distribution of the Cosmic Horseshoe independently of the DM profile.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberA40
JournalAstronomy and Astrophysics
Volume631
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Nov 2019

Keywords

  • Dark matter
  • Galaxy: halo
  • Galaxy: kinematics and dynamics
  • Galaxy: structure
  • Gravitational lensing: strong

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