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Title: A Robust Mass Estimator for Dark Matter Subhalo Perturbations in Strong Gravitational Lenses

Abstract

A few dark matter substructures have recently been detected in strong gravitational lenses through their perturbations of highly magnified images. We derive a characteristic scale for lensing perturbations and show that they are significantly larger than the perturber's Einstein radius. We show that the perturber's projected mass enclosed within this radius, scaled by the log-slope of the host galaxy's density profile, can be robustly inferred even if the inferred density profile and tidal radius of the perturber are biased. We demonstrate the validity of our analytic derivation using several gravitational lens simulations where the tidal radii and the inner log-slopes of the density profile of the perturbing subhalo are allowed to vary. Here, by modeling these simulated data, we find that our mass estimator, which we call the effective subhalo lensing mass, is accurate to within about 10% or smaller in each case, whereas the inferred total subhalo mass can potentially be biased by nearly an order of magnitude. We therefore recommend that the effective subhalo lensing mass be reported in future lensing reconstructions, as this will allow for a more accurate comparison with the results of dark matter simulations.

Authors:
 [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]
  1. City Univ. of New York, NY (United States); American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Lemont, IL (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1476647
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-06CH11357; PHY-1316792; AST-1615306; CNS-0855217; CNS-0958379; ACI-1126113.
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal (Online); Journal Volume: 845; Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; dark matter; galaxies: dwarf; gravitational lensing: strong

Citation Formats

Minor, Quinn E., Kaplinghat, Manoj, and Li, Nan. A Robust Mass Estimator for Dark Matter Subhalo Perturbations in Strong Gravitational Lenses. United States: N. p., 2017. Web. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa7fee.
Minor, Quinn E., Kaplinghat, Manoj, & Li, Nan. A Robust Mass Estimator for Dark Matter Subhalo Perturbations in Strong Gravitational Lenses. United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa7fee
Minor, Quinn E., Kaplinghat, Manoj, and Li, Nan. Fri . "A Robust Mass Estimator for Dark Matter Subhalo Perturbations in Strong Gravitational Lenses". United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa7fee. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1476647.
@article{osti_1476647,
title = {A Robust Mass Estimator for Dark Matter Subhalo Perturbations in Strong Gravitational Lenses},
author = {Minor, Quinn E. and Kaplinghat, Manoj and Li, Nan},
abstractNote = {A few dark matter substructures have recently been detected in strong gravitational lenses through their perturbations of highly magnified images. We derive a characteristic scale for lensing perturbations and show that they are significantly larger than the perturber's Einstein radius. We show that the perturber's projected mass enclosed within this radius, scaled by the log-slope of the host galaxy's density profile, can be robustly inferred even if the inferred density profile and tidal radius of the perturber are biased. We demonstrate the validity of our analytic derivation using several gravitational lens simulations where the tidal radii and the inner log-slopes of the density profile of the perturbing subhalo are allowed to vary. Here, by modeling these simulated data, we find that our mass estimator, which we call the effective subhalo lensing mass, is accurate to within about 10% or smaller in each case, whereas the inferred total subhalo mass can potentially be biased by nearly an order of magnitude. We therefore recommend that the effective subhalo lensing mass be reported in future lensing reconstructions, as this will allow for a more accurate comparison with the results of dark matter simulations.},
doi = {10.3847/1538-4357/aa7fee},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal (Online)},
number = 2,
volume = 845,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Aug 18 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Fri Aug 18 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}

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