It came as quite a surprise when in 1986 Lynds & Petrosian [111] and Soucail et al. [175] independently discovered this new gravitational lensing phenomenon: magnified, distorted and strongly elongated images of background galaxies which happen to lie behind foreground clusters of galaxies (recent HST images of these two original arc clusters (and others) compiled by J.-P. Kneib can be found at [93], [94].
Rich clusters of galaxies at redshifts beyond
with masses of order
are very effective lenses if they are centrally concentrated.
Their Einstein radii are of the order of 20 arcseconds. Since
most clusters are not really spherical mass distributions and
since the alignment between lens and source is usually not
perfect, no complete Einstein rings have been found around
clusters. But there are many examples known with spectacularly
long arcs which are curved around the cluster center, with
lengths up to about 20 arcseconds.
The giant arcs can be exploited in two ways, as is typical for many lens phenomena. Firstly they provide us with strongly magnified galaxies at (very) high redshifts. These galaxies would be too faint to be detected or analysed in their unlensed state. Hence with the lensing boost we can study these galaxies in their early evolutionary stages, possibly as infant or proto-galaxies, relatively shortly after the big bang. The other practical application of the arcs is to take them as tools to study the potential and mass distribution of the lensing galaxy cluster. In the simplest model of a spherically symmetric mass distribution for the cluster, giant arcs form very close to the critical curve, which marks the Einstein ring. So with the redshifts of the cluster and the arc it is easy to determine a rough estimate of the lensing mass by just determining the radius of curvature and interpreting it as the Einstein radius of the lens system.
More detailed modelling of the lensing clusters which allows for the asymmetry of the mass distribution according to the visible galaxies plus an unknown dark matter component provides more accurate determinations for the total cluster mass and its exact distribution. More than once this detailed modelling predicted additional (counter-) images of giant arcs, which later were found and confirmed spectroscopically [96, 48].
Gravitational lensing is the third method for the determination of masses of galaxy clusters, complementary to the mass determinations by X-ray analysis and the old art of using the virial theorem and the velocity distribution of the galaxies (the latter two methods use assumptions of hydrostatic or virial equilibrium, respectively). Although there are still some discrepancies between the three methods, it appears that in relaxed galaxy clusters the agreement between these different mass determinations is very good [8].
Some general results from the analysis of giant arcs in galaxy
clusters are: Clusters of galaxies are dominated by dark matter.
The typical ``mass-to-light ratios'' for clusters obtained from
strong (and weak, see below) lensing analyses are
[81].
The distribution of the dark matter follows roughly the distribution of the light in the galaxies, in particular in the central part of the cluster. The fact that we see such arcs shows that the central surface mass density in clusters must be high. The radii of curvature of many giant arcs is comparable to their distance to the cluster centers; this shows that core radii of clusters - the radii at which the mass profile of the cluster flattens towards the center - must be of order this distance or smaller. For stronger constraints detailed modelling of the mass distribution is required.
In Figures
16
and
17
two of the most spectacular cluster lenses producing arcs can be
seen: Clusters Abell 2218 and CL0024+1654. Close inspection of
the HST image of Abell 2218 reveals that the giant arcs are
resolved (Figure
16), structure can be seen in the individual components [95] and used for detailed mass models of the lensing cluster. In
addition to the giant arcs, more than 100 smaller ``arclets'' can
be identified in Abell 2218. They are farther away from the lens
center and hence are not magnified and curved as much as the few
giant arcs. These arclets are all slightly distorted images of
background galaxies. With the cluster mass model it is possible
to predict the redshift distribution of these galaxies. This has
been successfully done in this system with the identification of
an arc as a star-forming region, opening up a whole new branch
for the application of cluster lenses [49].
In another impressive exposure with the Hubble Space
Telescope, the galaxy cluster CL0024+1654 (redshift
z
= 0.39) was deeply imaged in two filters [41]. The combined picture (Figure
17) shows very nicely the reddish images of cluster galaxies, the
brightest of them concentrated around the center, and the bluish
arcs. There are four blue images which all have a shape
reminiscent of the Greek letter
. All the images are resolved and show similar structure (e.g.,
the bright fishhook-like feature at one end of the arcs), but two
of them are mirror inverted, i.e. have different parity! They lie
roughly on a circle around the center of the cluster and are
tangentially elongated. There is also another faint blue image
relatively close to the cluster center, which is extended
radially. Modelling reveals that this is a five-image
configuration produced by the massive galaxy cluster. All the
five arcs are images of the same galaxy, which is far behind the
cluster at a much higher redshift and most likely undergoes a
burst of star formation. This is a spectacular example of the use
of a galaxy cluster as a ``Zwicky'' telescope.
In CL0024+1654 the lensing effect produces a magnification of roughly a factor of ten. Combined with the angular resolution of the HST of 0.1 arcsec, this can be used to yield a resolution that effectively corresponds to 0.01 arcsec (in the tangential direction), unprecedented in direct optical imaging. Colley et al. [41] map the five images ``backward'' to the source plane with their model for the cluster lens and hence reconstruct the un-lensed source. They get basically identical source morphology for all arcs, which confirms that the arcs are all images of one source.
Recently, yet another superlative about cluster lenses was found: A new giant luminous arc was discovered in the field of the galaxy cluster CL1358+62 with the HST [61].
This arc-image turned out to be a galaxy at a redshift of
z
= 4.92. Up to a few months ago this was the most distant object
in the universe with a spectroscopically measured redshift! In
contrast to most other arcs, this one is very red. The reason is
that due to this very high redshift, the Lyman-
emission of the galaxy, which is emitted in the ultra-violet
part of the electromagnetic spectrum at a wavelength of
1216 Åis shifted by a factor of
to the red part at a wavelength of about 7200 Å!
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Gravitational Lensing in Astronomy
Joachim Wambsganss http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-1998-12 © Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. ISSN 1433-8351 Problems/Comments to livrev@aei-potsdam.mpg.de |