Strong Lensing in Abell 1703: Constraints on the Slope of the Inner Dark Matter Distribution

Understand

In this article, we apply strong lensing techniques in Abell 1703, a massive X-ray luminous galaxy cluster at z=0.28.

• Our analysis is based on imaging data both from space and ground in 8 bands, complemented with a spectroscopic survey.
• Abell 1703 looks rather circular from the general shape of its multiply imaged systems and present a dominant giant elliptical cD galaxy in its centre.
• This cluster exhibits a remarkable bright 'central ring' formed by 4 bright images at z_{spec}=0.888 located very close to the cD galaxy, providing observational constraints that are potentially very interesting to probe the central mass distribution.