Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21942715w&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #427.15
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Strong gravitational lensing provides a boost in the apparent flux and angular size of distant galaxies, enabling the study of high-redshift populations in unprecedented detail. Furthermore, the lensing distortion also establishes a measure of the total mass of the foreground deflector, and is therefore useful to study the distribution of dark matter in foreground structures. Using Herschel HerMES data we have compiled the largest catalog to date ( 90 sources) of distant submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) that are candidates for being strongly gravitationally lensed by individual foreground galaxies. Candidate identification is straightforward due to the steep bright-end slope of the intrinsic SMG number counts -- we simply select sources that are brighter than 80mJy at 500μm and remove local (z< 0.1) spiral galaxies and radio-loud AGN. The candidate lensed galaxies have submillimeter colors that are consistent with high-redshift galaxies and that are typical of Herschel-selected sources. A simple model of the lensing rate, based on the intrinsic SMG number counts and a foreground dark matter distribution, predicts that our candidates have high fidelity, with 40--90% of them lensed by a factor of ≤2. The model also predicts that the average magnification of the lensed SMGs increases with apparent 500μm flux and is a factor of 2--10 for the sources in our sample (S500=80--200mJy). Follow-up programs to target the candidate lensed galaxies are ongoing and initial results confirm the lensing nature of several systems. The typical SMG in these systems lies at z 3 and is lensed by a galaxy at z 0.5. The observed lensing magnifications are factors of 3--20, with the majority of observed sources magnified by factors < 10.
Cooray Asantha
de Bernardis Francesco
HERMES Collaboration
Wardlow Julie L.
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