Double dark matter vision: twice the number of compact-source lenses with narrow-line lensing and the WFC3 grism

Understand

The magnifications of compact-source lenses are extremely sensitive to the presence of low mass dark matter halos along the entire sight line from the source to the observer.

• Traditionally, the study of dark matter structure in compact-source strong gravitational lenses has been limited to radio-loud systems, as the radio emission is extended and thus unaffected by microlensing which can mimic the signal of dark matter structure.
• An alternate approach is to measure quasar nuclear-narrow line emission, which is free from microlensing and present in virtually all quasar lenses.
• In this paper, we double the number of systems which can be used for gravitational lensing analyses by presenting measurements of narrow-line emission from a sample of 8 quadruply imaged quasar lens systems, WGD J0405-3308, HS 0810+2554, RX J0911+0551, SDSS J1330+1810, PS J1606-2333, WFI 2026-4536, WFI 2033-4723 and WGD J2038-4008.