The Gravitational Lens CFRS03.1077

Abstract

An exquisite gravitational arc with a radius of 2.1" has been discovered around the z = 0.938 field elliptical galaxy CFRS03.1077 during HST observations of Canada-France Redshift Survey (CFRS) fields. Spectroscopic observations of the arc show that the redshift of the resolved lensed galaxy is z = 2.941. This gravitational lens-source system is well-fitted using the position angle and ellipticity derived from the visible matter distribution and an isothermal mass profile with a mass corresponding to sigma =387+-5 km/s. Surprisingly, given the evidence for passive evolution of elliptical galaxies, this is in good agreement with an estimate based on the fundamental plane for z = 0 ellipticals. This, perhaps, indicates that this galaxy has not shared in the significant evolution observed for average elliptical galaxies at z ~ 1. A second elliptical galaxy with similar luminosity from the CFRS survey, CFRS 14.1311 at z=0.807, is also a lens but in this case the lens model gives a much smaller mass-to-light ratio, i.e., it appears to confirm the expected evolution. This suggests that this pair of field elliptical galaxies may have very different evolutionary histories, a significant result if confirmed. Clearly, CFRS03.1077 demonstrates that these "Einstein rings" are powerful probes of high redshift galaxies.

11 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Ap. J

References in corpus (1)

• Luminosity Evolution of Field Early-Type Galaxies to z=0.55

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Massive Dark-matter halos and Evolution of Early-type Galaxies to z=1
• The redshift distribution of gravitational lenses revisited: Constraints on galaxy mass evolution
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey Spectroscopic Lens Search. I. Discovery of Intermediate-Redshift Star-Forming Galaxies Behind Foreground Luminous Red Galaxies
• The 8 o'clock Arc: A Serendipitous Discovery of a Strongly Lensed Lyman Break Galaxy in the SDSS DR4 Imaging Data
• Testing the dark energy with gravitational lensing statistics
• The discovery of two new galaxy-galaxy lenses from the SDSS
• The magnification of SN 1997ff, the farthest known Supernova
• Galaxy Number Counts and Implications for Strong Lensing
• Cosmic Evolution of Virial and Stellar Mass in Massive Early-Type Galaxies
• How robust are the constraints on cosmology and galaxy evolution from the lens-redshift test?
• Discovery of a high-redshift Einstein ring
• Catalog of Galaxy Morphology in Four Rich Clusters: Luminosity Evolution of Disk Galaxies at 0.33<z<0.83
• Confirming HSC strong lens candidates with DESI Spectroscopy. I. Project overview and first results