The robustness of angular diameter distances to the lens in the B1608+656 and RXJ1131-1231 systems

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the robustness of angular diameter distances in strong gravitational lensing systems B1608+656 and RXJ1131-1231, confirming their reliability as cosmic rulers by comparing with other distance measures.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the angular diameter distances from these lens systems are consistent with luminosity and galaxy cluster distances, supporting their use as standard rulers.

Findings

No tension found between lens distances and other cosmological measurements.

Supports the use of these lens systems as reliable cosmic distance indicators.

Confirms the assumptions underlying the lens distance measurements.

Abstract

The angular diameter distance of lens, $D_{Aol}$, of strong gravitational lensing systems has been claimed as a cosmic standard ruler. The first measurements for this distance were recently obtained to two well-known systems: B1608+656 and RXJ1131-1231. However, there is a range of possible systematic uncertainties which must be addressed in order to turn these systems into useful cosmic probes. In this paper, we confront $D_{Aol}$ with luminosity distances of type Ia supernovae and angular diameter distances of galaxy clusters to search for tensions between these cosmological measurements using the cosmic distance duality relation. No tension was verified with the present data, showing the robustness of the assumptions used to describe the lens systems.