Hubble Imaging Excludes Cosmic String Lens

Abstract

The galaxy image pair CSL-1 has been a leading candidate for a cosmic string lens. High quality imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope presented here show that it is not a lens but a pair of galaxies. The galaxies show different orientations of their principal axes, not consistent with any lens model. We present a new direct test of the straight-string lens model, using a displaced difference of the image from itself to exclude CSL-1 at high confidence.

3 pages, 2 figures. Higher quality versions of figures are available online. Bibliography modified. Accepted as a brief report to Phys. Rev. D

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