[en] Compact radio sources sometimes exhibit intervals of large, rapid changes in their flux density, due to lensing by interstellar plasma crossing the line of sight. A novel survey program has made it possible to discover these “Extreme Scattering Events” (ESEs) in real time, resulting in a high-quality dynamic spectrum of an ESE observed in PKS 1939–315. Here we present a method for determining the column-density profile of a plasma lens, given only the dynamic radio spectrum of the lensed source, under the assumption that the lens is either axisymmetric or totally anisotropic. Our technique relies on the known, strong frequency dependence of the plasma refractive index in order to determine how points in the dynamic spectrum map to positions on the lens. We apply our method to high-frequency (4.2–10.8 GHz) data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array of the PKS 1939–315 ESE. The derived electron column-density profiles are very similar for the two geometries we consider, and both yield a good visual match to the data. However, the fit residuals are substantially above the noise level, and deficiencies are evident when we compare the predictions of our model to lower-frequency (1.6–3.1 GHz) data on the same ESE, thus motivating future development of more sophisticated inversion techniques

[en] We determine an absolute calibration of the initial mass function (IMF) of early-type galaxies, by studying a sample of 56 gravitational lenses identified by the Sloan Lenses ACS Survey. Under the assumption of standard Navarro, Frenk, and White dark matter halos, a combination of lensing, dynamical, and stellar population synthesis models is used to disentangle the stellar and dark matter contribution for each lens. We define an 'IMF mismatch' parameter α≡M ^LD_*,Ein/M ^SPS_*,Ein as the ratio of stellar mass inferred by a joint lensing and dynamical model (M ^LD_*,Ein) to the current stellar mass inferred from stellar populations synthesis models (M ^SPS_*,Ein). We find that a Salpeter IMF provides stellar masses in agreement with those inferred by lensing and dynamical models ((log α) = -0.00 ± 0.03 ± 0.02), while a Chabrier IMF underestimates them ((log α) = 0.25 ± 0.03 ± 0.02). A tentative trend is found, in the sense that α appears to increase with galaxy velocity dispersion. Taken at face value, this result would imply a non-universal IMF, perhaps dependent on metallicity, age, or abundance ratios of the stellar populations. Alternatively, the observed trend may imply non-universal dark matter halos with inner density slope increasing with velocity dispersion. While the degeneracy between the two interpretations cannot be broken without additional information, the data imply that massive early-type galaxies cannot have both a universal IMF and universal dark matter halos.

[en] We exploit the strong lensing effect to explore the properties of intrinsically faint and compact galaxies at intermediate redshift (z_s ≅ 0.4-0.8) at the highest possible resolution at optical wavelengths. Our sample consists of 46 strongly lensed emission line galaxies (ELGs) discovered by the Sloan Lens ACS Survey (SLACS). The galaxies have been imaged at high resolution with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in three bands (V_HST , I₈₁₄, and H₁₆₀), allowing us to infer their size, luminosity, and stellar mass using stellar population synthesis models. Lens modeling is performed using a new fast and robust code, KLENS, which we test extensively on real and synthetic non-lensed galaxies, and also on simulated galaxies multiply imaged by SLACS-like galaxy-scale lenses. Our tests show that our measurements of galaxy size, flux, and Sersic index are robust and accurate, even for objects intrinsically smaller than the HST point-spread function. The median magnification is 8.8, with a long tail that extends to magnifications above 40. Modeling the SLACS sources reveals a population of galaxies with colors and Sersic indices (median n ∼ 1) consistent with the galaxies detected with HST in the Galaxy Evolution from Morphology and SEDs (GEMS) and Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) surveys, but that are (typically) ∼2 mag fainter and ∼5 times smaller in apparent size than GEMS and ∼4 mag brighter than but similar in size to HUDF. The size-stellar-mass and size-luminosity relations for the SLACS sources are offset to smaller sizes with respect to both comparison samples. The closest analog are ultracompact ELGs identified by HST grism surveys. The lowest mass galaxies in our sample are comparable to the brightest Milky Way satellites in stellar mass (10⁷ M_sun) and have well-determined half-light radii of 0.''05 (∼0.3 kpc).

[en] We study the relation between the internal structure of early-type galaxies and their environment using 70 strong gravitational lenses from the SLACS Survey. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database is used to determine two measures of overdensity of galaxies around each lens-the projected number density of galaxies inside the tenth nearest neighbor (Σ₁₀) and within a cone of radius one h^-1 Mpc (D ₁). Our main results are as follows. (1) The average overdensity is somewhat larger than unity, consistent with lenses preferring overdense environments as expected for massive early-type galaxies (12/70 lenses are in known groups/clusters). (2) The distribution of overdensities is indistinguishable from that of 'twin' nonlens galaxies selected from SDSS to have the same redshift and stellar velocity dispersion σ_*. Thus, within our errors, lens galaxies are an unbiased population, and the SLACS results can be generalized to the overall population of early-type galaxies. (3) Typical contributions from external mass distribution are no more than a few percent in local mass density, reaching 10-20% (∼0.05-0.10 external convergence) only in the most extreme overdensities. (4) No significant correlation between overdensity and slope of the mass-density profile of the lens galaxies is found. (5) Satellite galaxies (those with a more luminous companion) have marginally steeper mass-density profiles (as quantified by f _SIE = σ_*/σ_SIE = 1.12 ± 0.05 versus 1.01 ± 0.01) and smaller dynamically normalized mass enclosed within the Einstein radius (Δlog M _Ein/M _dim differs by -0.09 ± 0.03 dex) than central galaxies (those without). This result suggests that tidal stripping may affect the mass structure of early-type galaxies down to kpc scales probed by strong lensing, when they fall into larger structures.