A highly elongated prominent lens at z=0.87: first strong lensing analysis of El Gordo

Abstract

We present the first strong-lensing (SL) analysis of the galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102-4915 (\emph{El Gordo}), in recent \emph{HST}/ACS images, revealing a prominent strong lens at a redshift of $z=0.87$. This finding adds to the already-established unique properties of \emph{El Gordo}: it is the most massive, hot, X-ray luminous, and bright Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect cluster at $z\gtrsim 0.6$, and the only `bullet'-like merging cluster known at these redshifts. The lens consists of two merging massive clumps, where for a source redshift of $z_s\sim 2$ each clump exhibits only a small, separate critical area, with a total area of $0.69\pm0.11\sq\arcmin$ over the two clumps. For a higher source redshift, $z_s\sim 4$, the critical curves of the two clumps merge together into one bigger and very elongated lens (axis ratio $\simeq 5.5$), enclosing an effective area of $1.44\pm0.22\sq\arcmin$. The critical curves continue expanding with increasing redshift so that for high-redshift sources ($z_s\gtrsim 9$) they enclose an area of $\sim1.91\pm0.30\sq\arcmin$ (effective $θ_{e}\simeq46.8\pm3.7\arcsec$) and a mass of $6.09\pm 1.04\times 10^{14}{M}_{\odot }$. According to our model, the area of high magnification ($\mu >10$) for such high redshift sources is $\simeq1.2\sq\arcmin$, and the area with $\mu >5$ is $\simeq2.3\sq\arcmin$, making \emph{El Gordo} a compelling target for studying the high-redshift Universe. We obtain a strong lower limit on the total mass of \emph{El Gordo}, $\gtrsim 1.7\times 10^{15}{M}_{\odot }$ from the SL regime alone, suggesting a total mass of, roughly, $M_{200}\sim 2.3\times 10^{15}{M}_{\odot }$. Our results should be revisited when additional spectroscopic and \emph{HST} imaging data are available.

7 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; accepted to ApJ Letters; V2: minor changes, figure added, typos fixed

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