H0LiCOW XII. Lens mass model of WFI2033-4723 and blind measurement of its time-delay distance and $H_0$

Abstract

We present the lens mass model of the quadruply-imaged gravitationally lensed quasar WFI2033-4723, and perform a blind cosmographical analysis based on this system. Our analysis combines (1) time-delay measurements from 14 years of data obtained by the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses (COSMOGRAIL) collaboration, (2) high-resolution $\text{Hubble Space Telescope}$ imaging, (3) a measurement of the velocity dispersion of the lens galaxy based on ESO-MUSE data, and (4) multi-band, wide-field imaging and spectroscopy characterizing the lens environment. We account for all known sources of systematics, including the influence of nearby perturbers and complex line-of-sight structure, as well as the parametrization of the light and mass profiles of the lensing galaxy. After unblinding, we determine the effective time-delay distance to be $4784_{-248}^{+399}\mathrm{Mpc}$, an average precision of $6.6\%$. This translates to a Hubble constant $H_0=71.6_{-4.9}^{+3.8}\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\mathrm{Mp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}$, assuming a flat $\hat{I}›$CDM cosmology with a uniform prior on $\hat{I}{\text{c◯}}_{\mathrm{m}}$ in the range [0.05, 0.5]. This work is part of the $H_0$ Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LiCOW) collaboration, and the full time-delay cosmography results from a total of six strongly lensed systems are presented in a companion paper (H0LiCOW XIII).

Version accepted by MNRAS. 29 pages including appendix, 17 figures, 6 tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1607.01403