Validity of strong lensing statistics for constraints on the galaxy evolution model

TL;DR

This study assesses the effectiveness of strong lensing statistics in constraining galaxy evolution models using SDSS data and recent cosmological parameters, finding mild evolution in galaxy properties but inconsistency in some model parameters.

Contribution

It evaluates the validity of strong lensing statistics for galaxy evolution constraints with updated data and compares two evolution models, highlighting the need for larger samples.

Findings

Power-law model indexes are consistent with previous studies.

Mild evolution observed in galaxy number density and velocity dispersion up to z=1.

Parameters in Mitchell et al.'s model are inconsistent with current data.

Abstract

We examine the usefulness of the strong lensing statistics to constrain the evolution of the number density of lensing galaxies by adopting the values of the cosmological parameters determined by recent WMAP observation. For this purpose, we employ the lens-redshift test proposed by Kochanek (1992) and constrain the parameters in two evolution models, simple power-law model characterized by the power law indexes $nu_{n}$ and $\nu_{v}$ and the evolution model by Mitchell et al. (2005) based on CDM structure formation scenario. We use the well-defined lens sample from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and this is similarly sized samples used in the previous studies. Furthermore, we adopt the velocity dispersion function of early-type galaxies based on SDSS DR1 and DR5. It turns out that the indexes of power-law model are consistent with the previous studies, thus our results indicate the mild evolution in the number and velocity dispersion of early-type galaxies out to z = 1. However we found that the values for p and q used by Mitchell et al. are inconsistent with the presently available observational data. More complete sample is necessary to withdraw more realistic determination on these parameters.