The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search. II. Statistical lens sample from the third data release

Creators: Inada, Naohisa; Oguri, Masamune; Becker, Robert H.; Shin, Min-Su; Richards, Gordon T.; Hennawi, Joseph F.; White, Richard L.; Pindor, Bartosz; Strauss, Michael A.; Kochanek, Christopher S.; Johnston, David E.; Gregg, Michael D.; Kayo, Issha; Eisenstein, Daniel; Hall, Patrick B.; Castander, Francisco J.; Clocchiatti, Alejandro; Anderson, Scott F.; Schneider, Donald P.; York, Donald G.; Lupton, Robert; Chiu, Kuenley; Kawano, Yozo; Scranton, Ryan; Frieman, Joshua A.; Keeton, Charles R.; Morokuma, Tomoki; Rix, Hans-Walter; Turner, Edwin L.; Burles, Scott; Brunner, Robert J.; Sheldon, Erin Scott; Bahcall, Neta A.; Masataka, Fukugita

Abstract

We report the first results of our systematic search for strongly lensed quasars using the spectroscopically confirmed quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Among 46,420 quasars from the SDSS Data Release 3 (~4188 deg^2), we select a subsample of 22,683 quasars that are located at redshifts between 0.6 and 2.2 and are brighter than the Galactic extinction-corrected i-band magnitude of 19.1. We identify 220 lens candidates from the quasar subsample, for which we conduct extensive and systematic follow-up observations in optical and near-infrared wavebands, in order to construct a complete lensed quasar sample at image separations between 1" and 20" and flux ratios of faint to bright lensed images larger than 10^(−0.5). We construct a statistical sample of 11 lensed quasars. Ten of these are galaxy-scale lenses with small image separations (~ 1"-2") and one is a large separation (15") system which is produced by a massive cluster of galaxies, representing the first statistical sample of lensed quasars including both galaxy- and cluster-scale lenses. The Data Release 3 spectroscopic quasars contain an additional 11 lensed quasars outside the statistical sample.

Additional Information

© 2008 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 August 5; accepted 2007 October 29; published 2008 January 15. N. I. acknowledges support from the Special Postdoctoral Researcher Program of RIKEN and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. This work was supported in part by Department of Energy contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. A portion of this work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. M. A. S. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST 03-07409. I. K. acknowledges supports from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientists (No. 17740139), and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas No. 467 "Probing the Dark Energy through an Extremely Wide & Deep Survey with the Subaru Telescope." A. C. acknowledges the support of CONICYT, Chile, under grant FONDECYT 1051061. Use of the UH 2.2 m telescope and the UKIRT 3.8 m telescope for the observations is supported by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). Based in part on observations obtained with the Apache Point Observatory 3.5 m telescope, which is owned and operated by the Astrophysical Research Consortium. Based in part on data collected at Subaru Telescope (some of data obtained from the Subaru Telescope Sciences Archive System (SMOKA)), which is operated by NAOJ. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Keck Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The WIYN Observatory is a joint facility of the University Of Wisconsin–Madison, Indiana University, Yale University, and The National Optical Astronomy Observatories. This work is also based in part on observations obtained with the MDM 2.4 m Hiltner telescope, which is owned and operated by a consortium consisting of Columbia University, Dartmouth College, the University of Michigan, the Ohio State University and Ohio University. The WB 6.5 m telescope is the first telescope of the Magellan Project; a collaboration between the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, University of Arizona, Harvard University, University of Michigan, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to construct two 6.5moptical telescopes in the southern hemisphere. Based in part on observations made with the NASA/ESA HST, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with HST program GO-9744. Based in part on observations made with telescopes (ESO 3.6 m and NTT) at the European Southern Observatories La Silla in Chile. Some observations reported here were obtained at the MMT Observatory, a joint facility of the University of Arizona and the Smithsonian Institution. Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/. The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, Cambridge University, Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.

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