Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool to study the distribution of dark matter in the universe. The cold dark matter model of structure formation predicts the existence of quasars gravitationally lensed by concentrations of dark matter so massive that the quasar images would be split by over 7 inches. However, numerous searches for large-separation lensed quasars have been unsuccessful; all of the roughly 70 lensed quasars known to date, such as Q0957+561, have smaller splittings, and can be explained in terms of galaxy scale concentrations of baryonic matter that have undergone dissipative collapse. Here they report the discovery of the first large-separation lensed quasar, SDSS J1004+4112, with a maximum separation of 14.62 inches; at this separation, the lensing object must be dominated by dark matter. While gravitationally lensed galaxies of even large separation are known, large-separation quasars are more useful cosmological probes because of the simplicity of the resulting lens systems. The discovery in their current quasar sample is fully consistent with the theoretical expectations based on the cold dark matter model.
Authors: Inada, N., Oguri, M., Pindor, B., Hennawi, J., Chiu, K., Zheng, W., Ichikawa, S., Gregg, M., Becker, R., Suto, Y., Strauss, M., Turner, E., Keeton, C., Annis, J., Castander, F., Eisenstein, D., Frieman, J., Fukugita, M., Gunn, J., Johnston, D., Kent, S., Nichol, R., Richards, G., Rix, H., Sheldon, E., Bahcall, N., Brinkmann, J., Ivezic, Z., Lamb, D., Mckay, T., Schneider, D., York, D.
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W152608934