High resolution imaging and spectroscopy of the gravitational lens SDSSJ1206+4332: a natural coronagraph at $z=1.789$ and a standard ruler at $z=0.745$

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy of the gravitational lens SDSS J1206+4332 to analyze its structure, mass profile, and potential for cosmological measurements, highlighting its promise as a standard ruler and for Hubble constant estimation.

Contribution

First detailed reconstruction of the source and deflector potential for SDSS J1206+4332, demonstrating its utility for cosmography and refining mass profile measurements.

Findings

Mass density slope measured as 1.93±0.09

Lensed host galaxy forms an extra merging image pair

System shows potential for precise cosmological distance measurements

Abstract

We present spectroscopy and laser guide star adaptive optics (LGSAO) images of the doubly imaged lensed quasar SDSS J1206+4332. We revise the deflector redshift proposed previously to $z_{d}=0.745,$ and measure for the first time its velocity dispersion $\sigma=(290\pm30)$ km/s. The LGSAO data show the lensed quasar host galaxy stretching over the astroid caustic thus forming an extra pair of merging images, which was previously thought to be an unrelated galaxy in seeing limited data. Owing to the peculiar geometry, the lens acts as a natural coronagraph on the broad-line region of the quasar so that only narrow [O III] emission is found in the fold arc. We use the data to reconstruct the source structure and deflector potential, including nearby perturbers. We reconstruct the point-spread function (PSF) from the quasar images themselves, since no additional point source is present in the field of view. From gravitational lensing and stellar dynamics, we find the slope of the total mass density profile to be $\gamma^{\prime}=-\log\rho/\log r =1.93\pm0.09.$ We discuss the potential of SDSS J1206+4332 for measuring time delay distance (and thus H$_0$ and other cosmological parameters), or as a standard ruler, in combination with the time delay published by the COSMOGRAIL collaboration. We conclude that this system is very promising for cosmography. However, in order to achieve competitive precision and accuracy, an independent characterization of the PSF is needed. Spatially resolved kinematics of the deflector would reduce the uncertainties further. Both are within the reach of current observational facilities.