Lens models and magnification maps of the six Hubble Frontier Fields clusters

Journal Article · Wed Dec 10 04:00:00 EST 2014 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/797/1/48· OSTI ID:22370052

Johnson, Traci L.; Sharon, Keren ^[1]; Bayliss, Matthew B. ^[2]; Gladders, Michael D. ^[3]; Coe, Dan ^[4]; Ebeling, Harald ^[5]

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1. Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 1085 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (United States)
2. Department of Physics, Harvard University, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
3. Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
4. Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD (United States)
5. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)

We present strong-lensing models as well as mass and magnification maps for the cores of the six Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Frontier Fields galaxy clusters. Our parametric lens models are constrained by the locations and redshifts of multiple image systems of lensed background galaxies. We use a combination of photometric redshifts and spectroscopic redshifts of the lensed background sources obtained by us (for A2744 and AS1063), collected from the literature, or kindly provided by the lensing community. Using our results, we (1) compare the derived mass distribution of each cluster to its light distribution, (2) quantify the cumulative magnification power of the HST Frontier Fields clusters, (3) describe how our models can be used to estimate the magnification and image multiplicity of lensed background sources at all redshifts and at any position within the cluster cores, and (4) discuss systematic effects and caveats resulting from our modeling methods. We specifically investigate the effect of the use of spectroscopic and photometric redshift constraints on the uncertainties of the resulting models. We find that the photometric redshift estimates of lensed galaxies are generally in excellent agreement with spectroscopic redshifts, where available. However, the flexibility associated with relaxed redshift priors may cause the complexity of large-scale structure that is needed to account for the lensing signal to be underestimated. Our findings thus underline the importance of spectroscopic arc redshifts, or tight photometric redshift constraints, for high precision lens models. All products from our best-fit lens models (magnification, convergence, shear, deflection field) and model simulations for estimating errors are made available via the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.

• OSTI ID: 22370052
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 797; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ACCURACY
CONVERGENCE
DISTANCE
FLEXIBILITY
GALAXIES
GALAXY CLUSTERS
GRAVITATIONAL LENSES
MAPS
MASS
MASS DISTRIBUTION
MULTIPLICITY
RED SHIFT
SIMULATION
SPACE
TELESCOPES
VISIBLE RADIATION