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Title: VDES J2325-5229 a z = 2.7 gravitationally lensed quasar discovered using morphology-independent supervised machine learning

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
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  1. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Inst. of Astronomy. Kavli Inst. for Cosmology; CAPES Foundation, Brasilia (Brazil)
  2. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Inst. of Astronomy. Kavli Inst. for Cosmology
  3. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Inst. of Astronomy; Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Dept. of Astronomy
  4. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Inst. of Astronomy
  5. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom). Inst. of Astronomy. Centre for Mathematical Sciences. Dept. of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP)
  6. Univ. of Wollongong, NSW (Australia). School of Physics; Australian Astronomical Observatory, North Ryde, NSW (Australia)
  7. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
  8. National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris (France). Inst. of Astrophysics; Univ. College London (United Kingdom). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France). Inst. of Astrophysics
  9. National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris (France). Inst. of Astrophysics; Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France). Inst. of Astrophysics
  10. Univ. College London (United Kingdom). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  11. Inter-Institutional Astronomy Lab (LIneA), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); National Observatory, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  12. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States). Dept. of Astronomy; National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Urbana, IL (United States)
  13. IEEC-CSIC, Barcelona (Spain). Inst. of Space Sciences; The Barcelona Inst. of Science and Technology, Barcelona (Spain). Inst. of High Energy Physics
  14. Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Kavli Inst. for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
  15. Excellence Cluster Universe, Garching (Germany); Ludwig Maximilian Univ., Munich (Germany). Faculty of Physics
  16. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States). Dept. of Astronomy. Dept. of Physics
  17. IEEC-CSIC, Barcelona (Spain). Inst. of Space Sciences
  18. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics
  19. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States). Dept. of Physics
  20. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Astronomy; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  21. Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Kavli Inst. for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology; SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  22. The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States). Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. Dept. of Physics
  23. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, La Serena (Chile). Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
  24. Australian Astronomical Observatory, North Ryde, NSW (Australia)
  25. Inter-Institutional Astronomy Lab (LIneA), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Univ. of Sao Paulo (Brazil). Inst. of Physics. Dept. of Mathematical Physics
  26. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States). George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Inst. for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  27. The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States). Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. Dept. of Astronomy
  28. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences
  29. The Barcelona Inst. of Science and Technology, Barcelona (Spain). Inst. of High Energy Physics; Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, Barcelona (Spain)
  30. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab.
  31. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  32. Univ. of Sussex, Brighton (United Kingdom). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
  33. Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT), Madrid (Spain)
  34. Inter-Institutional Astronomy Lab (LIneA), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Federal Univ. of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre (Brazil). Inst. of Physics
  35. Inter-Institutional Astronomy Lab (LIneA), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Sao Paulo State Univ. (Brazil). Inst. of Theoretical Physics. ICTP South American Inst. for Fundamental Research
  36. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Computer Science and Mathematics Division
  37. Univ. of Portsmouth (United Kingdom). Inst. of Cosmology and Gravitation
+ Show Author Affiliations

We present the discovery and preliminary characterization of a gravitationally lensed quasar with a source redshift zs = 2.74 and image separation of 2.9 arcsec lensed by a foreground zl = 0.40 elliptical galaxy. Since optical observations of gravitationally lensed quasars show the lens system as a superposition of multiple point sources and a foreground lensing galaxy, we have developed a morphology-independent multi-wavelength approach to the photometric selection of lensed quasar candidates based on Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) supervised machine learning. Using this technique and gi multicolour photometric observations from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), near-IR JK photometry from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS) and WISE mid-IR photometry, we have identified a candidate system with two catalogue components with iAB = 18.61 and iAB = 20.44 comprising an elliptical galaxy and two blue point sources. Spectroscopic follow-up with NTT and the use of an archival AAT spectrum show that the point sources can be identified as a lensed quasar with an emission line redshift of z = 2.739 ± 0.003 and a foreground early-type galaxy with z = 0.400 ± 0.002. We model the system as a single isothermal ellipsoid and find the Einstein radius θE ~ 1.47 arcsec, enclosed mass Menc ~ 4 × 1011 M⊙ and a time delay of ~52 d. The relatively wide separation, month scale time delay duration and high redshift make this an ideal system for constraining the expansion rate beyond a redshift of 1.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Contributing Organization:
DES
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725; AST-1138766; AYA2012-39559; ESP2013-48274; FPA2013-47986; SEV-2012-0234; 240672; 291329; 306478; A/2013A/018; A/2013B/001; AC02-76SF00515; AC02-07CH11359
OSTI ID:
1340464
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1353198; OSTI ID: 1353386
Report Number(s):
arXiv:1607.01391; FERMILAB-PUB-16-220; KJ0402000; KJ0503000; ERKJ311; ERKJEPM; TRN: US1701242
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 465, Issue 4; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 59 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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PESSTO : survey description and products from the first data release by the Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects text January 2014
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The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy - an overview text January 2016
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The Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey:II. Gravitational lens candidate selection and follow-up text January 2002
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Tests for Substructure in Gravitational Lenses text January 2003
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Surveying the reach and maturity of machine learning and artificial intelligence in astronomy journal September 2019
COSMOGRAIL: the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses: XVI. Time delays for the quadruply imaged quasar DES J0408−5354 with high-cadence photometric monitoring⋆ journal January 2018
The strong gravitational lens finding challenge journal May 2019
Gaia GraL: Gaia DR2 gravitational lens systems : II. The known multiply imaged quasars⋆ journal October 2018
Quasi-stellar objects acting as potential strong gravitational lenses in the SDSS-III BOSS survey journal May 2019
Auto-detection of strong gravitational lenses using convolutional neural networks journal January 2018
Probing dark matter substructure in the gravitational lens HE 0435−1223 with the WFC3 grism journal June 2017
Finding strong lenses in CFHTLS using convolutional neural networks journal June 2017
Discovery and first models of the quadruply lensed quasar SDSS J1433+6007 journal November 2017
Constraining the microlensing effect on time delays with a new time-delay prediction model in H0 measurements journal September 2018
A gravitationally lensed quasar discovered in OGLE journal February 2018
Is every strong lens model unhappy in its own way? Uniform modelling of a sample of 13 quadruply+ imaged quasars journal December 2018
Gravitationally lensed quasars in Gaia – II. Discovery of 24 lensed quasars journal April 2018
H0LiCOW – IX. Cosmographic analysis of the doubly imaged quasar SDSS 1206+4332 and a new measurement of the Hubble constant journal January 2019
Quasar lenses in the south: searches over the DES public footprint journal August 2019
Catalogues of active galactic nuclei from Gaia and unWISE data journal September 2019
A SHARP view of H0LiCOW: H0 from three time-delay gravitational lens systems with adaptive optics imaging journal September 2019
Galaxy morphological classification in deep-wide surveys via unsupervised machine learning journal October 2019
Discovery of three strongly lensed quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey journal March 2018
The DES Bright Arcs Survey: Hundreds of Candidate Strongly Lensed Galaxy Systems from the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification and Year 1 Observations journal September 2017
Catalogues of active galactic nuclei from Gaia and unWISE data text January 2019
Gaia GraL: Gaia DR2 gravitational lens systems : I. New quadruply imaged quasar candidates around known quasars journal August 2018
Discovery and first models of the quadruply lensed quasar SDSS J1433+6007 text January 2017
Finding strong lenses in CFHTLS using convolutional neural networks text January 2017
Quasi-Stellar Objects acting as potential Strong Gravitational Lenses in the SDSS-III BOSS survey text January 2017
A Gravitationally Lensed Quasar Discovered in OGLE text January 2018
The Strong Gravitational Lens Finding Challenge text January 2018
Constraining the microlensing effect on time delays with new time-delay prediction model in $H_{0}$ measurements text January 2018
Quasar Lenses in the South: searches over the DES public footprint text January 2018
Is every strong lens model unhappy in its own way? Uniform modelling of a sample of 13 quadruply+ imaged quasars text January 2018
H0LiCOW - IX. Cosmographic analysis of the doubly imaged quasar SDSS 1206+4332 and a new measurement of the Hubble constant text January 2018
A SHARP view of H0LiCOW: $H_{0}$ from three time-delay gravitational lens systems with adaptive optics imaging text January 2019
Toward an Internally Consistent Astronomical Distance Scale book January 2017
Surveying the reach and maturity of machine learning and artificial intelligence in astronomy text January 2019

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
strong gravitational lensing
quasars
observational methods
statistical methods