Synergies between SALT and Herschel, Euclid & the SKA: strong gravitational lensing & galaxy evolution

TL;DR

This paper discusses how upcoming and existing large-scale surveys like Herschel, Euclid, and SKA, combined with SALT observations, can significantly advance our understanding of dark matter, galaxy evolution, and cosmology through gravitational lensing.

Contribution

It highlights the potential of SALT to follow up on large lens samples from new surveys, enabling detailed studies of dark matter and galaxy evolution.

Findings

Large numbers of strong lenses will be available from upcoming surveys.

SALT can provide crucial follow-up observations for these lenses.

Enhanced understanding of dark matter and galaxy evolution is achievable.

Abstract

Gravitational lensing has seen a surge of interest in the past few years. The handful of strong lensing systems known in the year 2000 has now been replaced with hundreds, thanks to innovative multi-wavelength selection, and there is an imminent prospect of thousands of lenses from Herschel and other sub-millimetre surveys. Euclid and the Square Kilometre Array promise tens or even hundreds of thousands. Gravitational lensing is one of the very few probes capable of mapping dark matter halo distributions. Lensing also provides independent cosmological parameter estimates and enables the study of galaxy populations that are otherwise too faint for detailed study. SALT is extremely well placed to have an enormous impact with follow-up observations of foreground lenses and background sources from e.g. Herschel, the South Pole Telescope, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, Euclid and the Square Kilometre Array. This paper reviews the prospects for high-impact SALT science and the many constraints of galaxy evolution that can result.