The role of luminous substructure in the gravitational lens system MG 2016+112

Abstract

MG 2016+112 is a quadruply imaged lens system with two complete images A and B and a pair of merging partial images in region C as seen in the radio. The merging images are found to violate the expected mirror symmetry. This indicates an astrometric anomaly which could only be of gravitational origin and could arise due to substructure in the environment or line-of-sight of the lens galaxy. We present new high resolution multi-frequency VLBI observations at 1.7, 5 and 8.4 GHz. Three new components are detected in the new VLBI imaging of both the lensed images A and B. The expected opposite parity of the lensed images A and B was confirmed due to the detection of non-collinear components. Furthermore, the observed properties of the newly detected components are inconsistent with the predictions of previous mass models. We present new scenarios for the background quasar which are consistent with the new observations. We also investigate the role of the satellite galaxy situated at the same redshift as the main lensing galaxy. Our new mass models demonstrate quantitatively that the satellite galaxy is the primary cause of the astrometric anomaly found in region C. The detected satellite is consistent with the abundance of subhaloes expected in the halo from cold dark matter (CDM) simulations. However, the fraction of the total halo mass in the satellite as computed from lens modeling is found to be higher than that predicted by CDM simulations.

17 pages, 11 figures, accepted with minor revisions in the text including corrected sign of the shear and improved figures

References in corpus (3)

• The Luminosity Function of the Milky Way Satellites
• High resolution imaging of the anomalous flux-ratio gravitational lens system CLASS B2045+265: Dark or luminous satellites?
• Luminous satellite galaxies in gravitational lenses

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Inference of the Cold Dark Matter substructure mass function at z=0.2 using strong gravitational lenses
• LinKS: Discovering galaxy-scale strong lenses in the Kilo-Degree Survey using Convolutional Neural Networks
• Constraining the mass density of free-floating black holes using razor-thin lensing arcs
• Multi-messenger Gravitational Lensing
• Adaptive optics observations of the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1405+0959
• High-redshift quasars at $z\ge 3$: radio variability and MPS/GPS candidates
• Resolving Complex Inner X-ray Structure of the Gravitationaly Lensed AGN MGB2016+112
• Strong Lensing by Subhalos in the Dwarf-Galaxy Mass Range II: Detection Probabilities
• An extended and extremely thin gravitational arc from a lensed compact symmetric object at redshift 2.059
• ALMA Measurement of 10 kpc-scale Lensing Power Spectra towards the Lensed Quasar MG J0414+0534
• Role of the companion lensing galaxy in the CLASS gravitational lens B1152+199