Gaia GraL: Gaia DR2 gravitational lens systems. II. The known multiply imaged quasars

Creators: Ducourant, C.; Wertz, O.; Krone-Martins, A.; Teixeira, R.; Le Campion, J.-F.; Galluccio, L.; Klüter, J.; Delchambre, L.; Surdej, J.; Mignard, F.; Wambsganss, J.; Bastian, U.; Graham, M. J.; Djorgovski, S. G.; Slezak, E.

Abstract

Context. Thanks to its spatial resolution, the ESA/Gaia space mission offers a unique opportunity to discover new multiply imaged quasars and to study the already known lensed systems at sub-milliarcsecond astrometric precisions. Aims. In this paper, we address the detection of the known multiply imaged quasars from the Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) and determine the astrometric and photometric properties of the individually detected images found in the Gaia DR2 catalogue. Methods. We have compiled an exhaustive list of quasar gravitational lenses from the literature to search for counterparts in the Gaia DR2. We then analysed the astrometric and photometric properties of these Gaia's detections. To highlight the tremendous potential of Gaia at the sub-milliarcsecond level we finally performed a simple Bayesian modelling of the well-known gravitational lens system HE0435-1223, using Gaia DR2 and HST astrometry. Results. From 481 known multiply imaged quasars, 206 have at least one image found in the Gaia DR2. Among the 44 known quadruply imaged quasars of the list, 29 have at least one image in the Gaia DR2, 12 of which are fully detected (2MASX J01471020+4630433, HE 0435-1223, SDSS1004+4112, PG1115+080, RXJ1131-1231, 2MASS J11344050-2103230, 2MASS J13102005-1714579, B1422+231, J1606-2333, J1721+8842, WFI2033-4723, WGD2038-4008), eight have three counterparts, eight have two and one has only one. As expected, the modelling of HE0435-1223 shows that the model parameters are significantly better constrained when using Gaia astrometry compared to HST astrometry, in particular the relative positions of the background quasar source and the centroid of the deflector. The Gaia sub-milliarcsecond astrometry also significantly reduces the parameter correlations. Conclusions. Besides providing an up-to-date list of multiply imaged quasars and their detection in the Gaia DR2, this paper shows that more complex modelling scenarios will certainly benefit from Gaia sub-milliarcsecond astrometry.

Additional Information

© 2018 ESO. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Received 23 May 2018; Accepted 2 July 2018; Published online 12 October 2018. The authors wish to thank the referee for his constructive comments. AKM acknowledges the support from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through grants SFRH/BPD/74697/2010, from the Portuguese Strategic Programme UID/FIS/00099/2013 for CENTRA, from the ESA contract AO/1-7836/14/NL/HB and from the Caltech Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy for hosting a research leave during 2017-2018, when this paper was prepared. LD and JS acknowledge support from the ESA PRODEX Programme "Gaia-DPAC QSOs" and from the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office. OW acknowledges support from a fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. SGD and MJG acknowledge a partial support from the NSF grants AST-1413600 and AST-1518308, and the NASA grant 16-ADAP16-0232. We acknowledge partial support from "Actions sur projet INSU-PNGRAM", and from the Brazil-France exchange programmes Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) – Comité Français d'Évaluation de la Coopération Universitaire et Scientifique avec le Brésil (COFECUB). The authors wish to thank C. Spindola Duarte for her help with the source referencing. This work has made use of the computing facilities of the Laboratory of Astroinformatics (IAG/USP, NAT/Unicsul), whose purchase was made possible by the Brazilian agency FAPESP (grant 2009/54006-4) and the INCT-A, and we thank the entire LAi team, specially Carlos Paladini, Ulisses Manzo Castello, and Alex Carciofi for the support. This research has made use of the VizieR catalogue access tool, CDS, Strasbourg, France. The original description of the VizieR service was published in A&AS 143, 23. This research has made use of 'Aladin sky atlas' developed at CDS, Strasbourg Observatory, France. This work has made use of results from the ESA space mission Gaia, the data from which were processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. The Gaia mission website is: http://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia. Some of the authors are members of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC).

Attached Files

Published - aa33480-18.pdf

Submitted - 1805.07359.pdf

Files

aa33480-18.pdf

Files (3.2 MB)

Name	Size	Download all
aa33480-18.pdf md5:4a67d57e1e6a0b0260ac643904612546	1.7 MB	Preview Download
1805.07359.pdf md5:e78306cb7269a6f464a57667db145279	1.5 MB	Preview Download

Additional details

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes