Improving Lens Modelling from Ground-Based Imaging with Deconvolution

arXiv:2609.34305 · astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM · Submitted 2026-09-28 · Read on arXiv

astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM

Submitted: 2026-09-28

Updated: 2026-09-28

Comments: 12 pages, 6 figures, 2 appendices. Accepted for publication in MDPI Galaxies' Strong Gravitational Lens Modeling special issue

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Accurate and precise mass modelling of strong lensing systems is essential for extracting insights into cosmology, galaxy environments, and the nature of dark matter.

Terminology

Accuracy — 21× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
Gravitational Lensing — 5× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
AGN — 2× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
Elliptical Power Law — 2× in this paper
Robustness — 2× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
Benchmark — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Core — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Degeneracy — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
Fidelity — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics — 1× in this paper
Inverse Problem — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Japan Society for Promotion of Science — 1× in this paper
Microlensing — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Objective Function — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Regularization — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Singular Isothermal Elliptical — 1× in this paper
Sparsity — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
Systematic Bias — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
Verification — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Abstract

Accurate and precise mass modelling of strong lensing systems is essential for extracting insights into cosmology, galaxy environments, and the nature of dark matter. The Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP), which has mapped about 1000 square degrees of the sky, discovered over 1000 definite or probable galaxy-scale gravitational lens candidates. As the resolution of ground-based imaging poses challenges for accurate lens modelling, high-resolution imaging is traditionally sought after for detailed analyses of these systems. In this work, we instead propose applying the STARRED algorithm, which leverages starlet wavelet regularisation, as a preprocessing step before lens modelling to maximise the scientific output of the large HSC-SSP sample. We test this approach on seven HSC-like mock lensing systems with different lensing configurations. Our results show that the resolution boost from about 0.6" to about 0.15" enables improved accuracy and sub-3% precision measurements of key lensing parameters such as the Einstein radius and the mass axis ratio for ground-based images. These results pave the way for accurate measurements of key strong lensing quantities from a large sample of ground-based observations.

Sources

Composable Effects for Flexible and Accelerated Probabilistic Programming in NumPyro

Terminology

Abstract

Sources

Related papers