Search

Acting as powerful gravitational lenses, the strong lensing galaxy clusters of the deep Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) program permit access to lower-luminosity galaxies lying at higher redshifts than hitherto possible. We analyzed the HFF to measure the volume density of Lyman-break galaxies at z > 4.75 by identifying a complete and reliable sample up to z ≃ 10. A marked deficit of such galaxies was uncovered in the highly magnified regions of the clusters relative to their outskirts, implying that the magnification of the sky area dominates over additional faint galaxies magnified above the flux limit. This negative magnification bias is consistent with a slow rollover at the faint end of the UV luminosity function and it indicates a preference for Bose–Einstein condensate dark matter with a light boson mass of over standard cold dark matter. We emphasize that measuring the magnification bias requires no correction for multiply-lensed images (with typically three or more images per source), whereas directly reconstructing the luminosity function will lead to an overestimate unless such images can be exhaustively matched up, especially at the faint end that is only accessible in the strongly lensed regions. In addition, we detected a distinctive downward transition in galaxy number density at z ≳ 8, which may be linked to the relatively late reionization reported by Planck. Our results suggests that JWST will likely peer into an “abyss” with essentially no galaxies detected in deep NIR imaging at z > 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We make use of a catalog of 1600 Pan-STARRS1 groups produced by the probability friends-of-friends algorithm to explore how the galaxy properties, i.e., the specific star formation rate (SSFR) and quiescent fraction, depend on stellar mass and group-centric radius. The work is the extension of Lin et al. In this work, powered by a stacking technique plus a background subtraction for contamination removal, a finer correction and more precise results are obtained than in our previous work. We find that while the quiescent fraction increases with decreasing group-centric radius, the median SSFRs of star-forming galaxies in groups at fixed stellar mass drop slightly from the field toward the group center. This suggests that the main quenching process in groups is likely a fast mechanism. On the other hand, a reduction in SSFRs by ∼0.2 dex is seen inside clusters as opposed to the field galaxies. If the reduction is attributed to the slow quenching effect, the slow quenching process acts dominantly in clusters. In addition, we also examine the density–color relation, where the density is defined by using a sixth-nearest-neighbor approach. Comparing the quiescent fractions contributed from the density and radial effect, we find that the density effect dominates the massive group or cluster galaxies, and the radial effect becomes more effective in less massive galaxies. The results support mergers and/or starvation as the main quenching mechanisms in the group environment, while harassment and/or starvation dominate in clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a list of galaxy-scale lens candidates including a highly probable interacting galaxy-scale lens in the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) imaging survey. We combine HSC imaging with the blended-spectra catalog from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey to identify lens candidates, and use lens mass modeling to confirm the candidates. There are 45 matches between the HSC S14A_0b imaging data release and the GAMA catalog. We separate lens and lensed arcs using color information, and exclude those candidates with small image separations (<1.″0, estimated with the lens/source redshifts from the GAMA survey) that are not easily resolved with ground-based imaging. After excluding these, we find 10 probable lens systems. There is one system with an interacting galaxy pair, HSC J084928+000949, that has a valid mass model. We predict the total mass enclosed by the Einstein radius of ∼0.″72 (∼1.65 kpc) for this new expected lens system to be . Using the photometry in the grizy bands of the HSC survey and stellar population synthesis modeling with a Salpeter stellar initial mass function, we estimate the stellar mass within the Einstein radius to be . We thus find a dark matter mass fraction within the Einstein radius of . Further spectroscopy or high-resolution imaging would allow confirmation of the nature of these lens candidates. The particular system with the interacting galaxy pair, if confirmed, would provide an opportunity to study the interplay between dark matter and stars as galaxies build up through hierarchical mergers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The newly established luminosity functions (LFs) of high-z galaxies at 4 ≲ z ≲ 10 can provide a stringent check on dark matter models that aim to explain the core properties of dwarf galaxies. The cores of dwarf spheroidal galaxies are understood to be too large to be accounted for by free streaming of warm dark matter without overly suppressing the formation of such galaxies. Here we demonstrate with cosmological simulations that wave dark matter, , appropriate for light bosons such as axions, does not suffer from this problem, given a boson mass of (2σ). In this case, the halo mass function is suppressed below at a level that is consistent with the high-z LFs, while simultaneously generating the kiloparsec-scale cores in dwarf galaxies arising from the solitonic ground state in . We demonstrate that the reionization history in this scenario is consistent with the Thomson optical depth recently reported by Planck, assuming a reasonable ionizing photon production rate. We predict that the LF should turn over slowly around an intrinsic ultraviolet luminosity of at . We also show that for galaxies magnified in the Hubble Frontier Fields, predicts an order of magnitude fewer detections than cold dark matter at down to , allowing us to distinguish between these very different interpretations for the observed coldness of dark matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong gravitationally lensed quasars provide powerful means to study galaxy evolution and cosmology. Current and upcoming imaging surveys will contain thousands of new lensed quasars, augmenting the existing sample by at least two orders of magnitude. To find such lens systems, we built a robot, Chitah, that hunts for lensed quasars by modeling the configuration of the multiple quasar images. Specifically, given an image of an object that might be a lensed quasar, Chitah first disentangles the light from the supposed lens galaxy and the light from the multiple quasar images based on color information. A simple rule is designed to categorize the given object as a potential four-image (quad) or two-image (double) lensed quasar system. The configuration of the identified quasar images is subsequently modeled to classify whether the object is a lensed quasar system. We test the performance of Chitah using simulated lens systems based on the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. For bright quads with large image separations (with Einstein radius ) simulated using Gaussian point-spread functions, a high true-positive rate (TPR) of and a low false-positive rate of show that this is a promising approach to search for new lens systems. We obtain high TPR for lens systems with , so the performance of Chitah is set by the seeing. We further feed a known gravitational lens system, COSMOS 5921+0638, to Chitah, and demonstrate that Chitah is able to classify this real gravitational lens system successfully. Our newly built Chitah is omnivorous and can hunt in any ground-based imaging surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]