Gravitational lens candidates in the E-CDFS

TL;DR

This paper reports ten gravitational lens candidates in the E-CDFS, including five promising systems with preliminary mass modeling, and compares their properties to known lens populations, highlighting the need for spectroscopic confirmation.

Contribution

First identification of ten lens candidates in E-CDFS with preliminary modeling and comparison to existing lens populations, advancing gravitational lens searches in this field.

Findings

Five promising lens candidates with preliminary mass models.

Lensing masses exceed stellar masses, consistent with dark matter presence.

Candidates follow the halo mass-stellar mass relation predicted by models.

Abstract

We report ten lens candidates in the E-CDFS from the GEMS survey. Nine of the systems are new detections and only one of the candidates is a known lens system. For the most promising five systems including the known lens system, we present results from preliminary lens mass modelling, which tests if the candidates are plausible lens systems. Photometric redshifts of the candidate lens galaxies are obtained from the COMBO-17 galaxy catalog. Stellar masses of the candidate lens galaxies within the Einstein radius are obtained by using the $z$-band luminosity and the $V-z$ color-based stellar mass-to-light ratios. As expected, the lensing masses are found to be larger than the stellar masses of the candidate lens galaxies. These candidates have similar dark matter fractions as compared to lenses in SLACS and COSMOS. They also roughly follow the halo mass-stellar mass relation predicted by the subhalo abundance matching technique. One of the candidate lens galaxies qualifies as a LIRG and may not be a true lens because the arc-like feature in the system is likely to be an active region of star formation in the candidate lens galaxy. Amongst the five best candidates, one is a confirmed lens system, one is a likely lens system, two are less likely to be lenses and the status of one of the candidates is ambiguous. Spectroscopic follow-up of these systems is still required to confirm lensing and/or for more accurate determination of the lens masses and mass density profiles.