The Optimal Gravitational Lens Telescope

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel optical instrument for directly inverting gravitational lens images at the telescope, enhancing the ability to detect faint sources and explore objects behind cosmic lenses.

Contribution

Introduction of an ad-hoc optical instrument for direct inversion of gravitational lens images at the telescope, improving detection of faint sources.

Findings

Laboratory experiments demonstrate the instrument's effectiveness.

Numerical simulations support the feasibility of direct inversion.

Potential to observe fainter objects behind lenses.

Abstract

Given an observed gravitational lens mirage produced by a foreground deflector (cf. galaxy, quasar, cluster,...), it is possible via numerical lens inversion to retrieve the real source image, taking full advantage of the magnifying power of the cosmic lens. This has been achieved in the past for several remarkable gravitational lens systems. Instead, we propose here to invert an observed multiply imaged source directly at the telescope using an ad-hoc optical instrument which is described in the present paper. Compared to the previous method, this should allow one to detect fainter source features as well as to use such an optimal gravitational lens telescope to explore even fainter objects located behind and near the lens. Laboratory and numerical experiments illustrate this new approach.