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Session 27 - Gravitational Lensing & Dark Matter.
Oral session, Monday, January 13
Frontenac Ballroom,
There is ample evidence from lensing for the clumping of dark matter on different scales within clusters, although the spatial extent of dark halos of cluster galaxies are yet to be constrained. The issue is of crucial importance as it addresses the key question of whether the mass to light ratio of galaxies is a function of the environment, and if it is indeed significantly different in the high density regions like cluster cores as opposed to the field. Weak shear maps of the outer regions of clusters have been successfully used to map the distribution of mass at large radii. However the typical smoothing lengths generally employed preclude the systematic study of the effects of galactic-scale substructure on the measured weak lensing signal. We present two new methods to study the effect of bright cluster galaxies on the cluster weak shear field - aperture averaging of the local shear and a maximum likelihood method to obtain limits on parameters that characterize galaxy halos.
The composite lensing effect of a cluster is modeled by the superposition of mass clumps with different scales: a large-scale clump to describe the cluster and smaller scale ones for individual cluster galaxies. Working in the local frame of each perturber, the shear induced by the larger scale component can be efficiently subtracted, yielding the averaged shear field induced by the smaller-scale mass component. Cluster galaxy halos are modeled using simple scaling relations and the background high redshift population is modeled in consonance with observations from redshift surveys and lensing constraints. We demonstrate using simulations that these observed local weak-shear effects on galaxy scales within the cluster can be used to statistically constrain reliably the mean M/L of cluster members, and fiducial parameters like the halo size, velocity dispersion and hence mass of cluster galaxies. The results of the members, and fiducial parameters like the halo size and the velocity dispersion. The results of the application of these techniques to the mosaic-ed HST data of the cluster AC114, and the stacked HST-archive clusters are presented.
