The Sloan Bright Arcs Survey : Six Strongly Lensed Galaxies at z=0.4-1.4

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and confirmation of six strongly lensed galaxies at redshifts 0.4-1.4 from SDSS data, highlighting the potential of galaxy groups as lensing systems and expanding the known sample.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic search method for group-scale strong lensing systems in SDSS, doubling the number of confirmed lenses at this mass scale.

Findings

Six new confirmed strong lens systems at z=0.4-1.4

Lenses are group-scale with velocity dispersions 466-878 km/s

Sample doubles the known group-scale lenses in SDSS

Abstract

We present new results of our program to systematically search for strongly lensed galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) imaging data. In this study six strong lens systems are presented which we have confirmed with follow-up spectroscopy and imaging using the 3.5m telescope at the Apache Point Observatory. Preliminary mass models indicate that the lenses are group-scale systems with velocity dispersions ranging from 466-878 km s^{-1} at z=0.17-0.45 which are strongly lensing source galaxies at z=0.4-1.4. Galaxy groups are a relatively new mass scale just beginning to be probed with strong lensing. Our sample of lenses roughly doubles the confirmed number of group-scale lenses in the SDSS and complements ongoing strong lens searches in other imaging surveys such as the CFHTLS (Cabanac et al 2007). As our arcs were discovered in the SDSS imaging data they are all bright ($r\lesssim22$), making them ideally suited for detailed follow-up studies.