A Spectroscopically Confirmed Double Source Plane Lens System in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery and spectroscopic confirmation of a unique double source plane lens system with two sources at different redshifts, providing valuable data for gravitational lensing and galaxy evolution studies.

Contribution

It presents the first spectroscopically confirmed double source plane lens system with both sources' redshifts measured, and highlights the need for substructure in lens modeling.

Findings

Confirmed two sources at different redshifts with spectroscopy.

Detected source knots with slight redshift offsets, indicating multiple components.

Identified the necessity of substructure in lens potential modeling.

Abstract

We report the serendipitous discovery of HSC J142449-005322, a double source plane lens system in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. We dub the system Eye of Horus. The lens galaxy is a very massive early-type galaxy with stellar mass of ~7x10^11 Msun located at z_L=0.795. The system exhibits two arcs/rings with clearly different colors, including several knots. We have performed spectroscopic follow-up observations of the system with FIRE on Magellan. The outer ring is confirmed at z_S2=1.988 with multiple emission lines, while the inner arc and counterimage is confirmed at z_S1=1.302. This makes it the first double source plane system with spectroscopic redshifts of both sources. Interestingly, redshifts of two of the knots embedded in the outer ring are found to be offset by delta_z=0.002 from the other knots, suggesting that the outer ring consists of at least two distinct components in the source plane. We perform lens modeling with two independent codes and successfully reproduce the main features of the system. However, two of the lensed sources separated by ~0.7 arcsec cannot be reproduced by a smooth potential, and the addition of substructure to the lens potential is required to reproduce them. Higher-resolution imaging of the system will help decipher the origin of this lensing feature and potentially detect the substructure.