Towards the automatic estimation of gravitational lenses' time delays

TL;DR

This paper develops an automatic, robust method for estimating gravitational lens time delays from noisy, gapped data, aiming to improve analysis in complex observational scenarios.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new estimation procedure tailored for large photometric experiments, based on detailed analysis of previous methods and tested on real controversial data sets.

Findings

Proposed method shows promising results on complex real data

Identifies key steps for robust delay estimation

Provides software useful for astronomers

Abstract

Estimation of time delays from a noisy and gapped data is one of the simplest data analysis problems in astronomy by its formulation. But as history of real experiments show, the work with observed data sets can be quite complex and evolved. By analysing in detail previous attempts to build delay estimation algorithms we try to develop an automatic and robust procedure to perform the task. To evaluate and compare different variants of the algorithms we use real observed data sets which have been objects of past controversies. In this way we hope to select the methods and procedures which have highest probability to succeed in complex situations. As a result of our investigations we propose an estimation procedure which can be used as a method of choice in large photometric experiments. We can not claim that proposed methodology works with any reasonably well sampled input data set. But we hope that the steps taken are in correct direction and developed software is truly useful for practising astronomers.