Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2000-09-22
Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 321 (2001) 187
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 12 pages, 29 included PostScript figures
Scientific paper
10.1046/j.1365-8711.2001.04003.x
We present the results of an unbiased radio search for gravitational lensing events with image separations between 15 and 60 arcsec, which would be associated with clusters of galaxies with masses >10^{13-14}M_{\sun}. A parent population of 1023 extended radio sources stronger than 35 mJy with stellar optical identifications was selected using the FIRST radio catalogue at 1.4 GHz and the APM optical catalogue. The FIRST catalogue was then searched for companions to the parent sources stronger than 7 mJy and with separation in the range 15 to 60 arcsec. Higher resolution observations of the resulting 38 lens candidates were made with the VLA at 1.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and with MERLIN at 5 GHz in order to test the lens hypothesis in each case. None of our targets was found to be a gravitational lens system. These results provide the best current constraint on the lensing rate for this angular scale, but improved calculations of lensing rates from realistic simulations of the clustering of matter on the relevant scales are required before cosmologically significant constraints can be derived from this null result. We now have an efficient, tested observational strategy with which it will be possible to make an order-of-magnitude larger unbiased search in the near future.
Browne I. W. A.
Phillips P. M.
Wilkinson Peter N.
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