DISSECTING THE GRAVITATIONAL LENS B1608+656. II. PRECISION MEASUREMENTS OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT, SPATIAL CURVATURE, AND THE DARK ENERGY EQUATION OF STATE

Journal Article · Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 EST 2010 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/711/1/201· OSTI ID:21394362

Suyu, S H; Hilbert, S ^[1]; Marshall, P J; Blandford, R D ^[2]; Auger, M W; Treu, T ^[3]; Koopmans, L V. E. ^[4]

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1. Argelander Institut fuer Astronomie, Auf dem Huegel 71, 53121 Bonn (Germany)
2. Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, P.O. Box 20450, MS 29, Stanford, CA 94309 (United States)
3. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9530 (United States)
4. Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, P.O. Box 800, 9700AV Groningen (Netherlands)

Strong gravitational lens systems with measured time delays between the multiple images provide a method for measuring the 'time-delay distance' to the lens, and thus the Hubble constant. We present a Bayesian analysis of the strong gravitational lens system B1608+656, incorporating (1) new, deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations, (2) a new velocity-dispersion measurement of 260 +- 15 km s{sup -1} for the primary lens galaxy, and (3) an updated study of the lens' environment. Our analysis of the HST images takes into account the extended source surface brightness, and the dust extinction and optical emission by the interacting lens galaxies. When modeling the stellar dynamics of the primary lens galaxy, the lensing effect, and the environment of the lens, we explicitly include the total mass distribution profile logarithmic slope gamma' and the external convergence kappa{sub ext}; we marginalize over these parameters, assigning well-motivated priors for them, and so turn the major systematic errors into statistical ones. The HST images provide one such prior, constraining the lens mass density profile logarithmic slope to be gamma' = 2.08 +- 0.03; a combination of numerical simulations and photometric observations of the B1608+656 field provides an estimate of the prior for kappa{sub ext}: 0.10{sup +0.08}{sub -0.05}. This latter distribution dominates the final uncertainty on H{sub 0}. Fixing the cosmological parameters at OMEGA{sub m} = 0.3, OMEGA{sub L}AMBDA = 0.7, and w = -1 in order to compare with previous work on this system, we find H{sub 0} = 70.6{sup +3.1}{sub -3.1} km s{sup -1} Mpc{sup -1}. The new data provide an increase in precision of more than a factor of 2, even including the marginalization over kappa{sub ext}. Relaxing the prior probability density function for the cosmological parameters to that derived from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) five-year data set, we find that the B1608+656 data set breaks the degeneracy between OMEGA{sub m} and OMEGA{sub L}AMBDA at w = -1 and constrains the curvature parameter to be -0.031 < OMEGA{sub k} < 0.009 (95% CL), a level of precision comparable to that afforded by the current Type Ia SNe sample. Asserting a flat spatial geometry, we find that, in combination with WMAP, H{sub 0} = 69.7{sup +4.9}{sub -5.0} km s{sup -1} Mpc{sup -1} and w = -0.94{sup +0.17}{sub -0.19} (68% CL), suggesting that the observations of B1608+656 constrain w as tightly as the current Baryon Acoustic Oscillation data do.

• OSTI ID: 21394362
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 711, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/711/1/201; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ANISOTROPY
BRIGHTNESS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CONVERGENCE
COSMOLOGY
DATA ANALYSIS
DUSTS
EMISSION
EQUATIONS OF STATE
GALAXIES
GRAVITATIONAL LENSES
MASS DISTRIBUTION
MICROWAVE RADIATION
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
PROBABILITY DENSITY FUNCTIONS
TELESCOPES
TIME DELAY
DISTRIBUTION
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
EQUATIONS
FUNCTIONS
LENSES
MATTER
OPTICAL PROPERTIES
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
RADIATIONS
SIMULATION
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION