Improving time-delay cosmography with spatially resolved kinematics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that spatially resolved stellar kinematics in gravitational lensing systems significantly improve measurements of cosmological parameters, especially the Hubble constant, by breaking degeneracies and providing more precise distance estimates.

Contribution

The study shows that integral field spectrograph observations enable better constraints on cosmological parameters by breaking degeneracies in lens modeling, with realistic error estimates for current and future instruments.

Findings

Spatially resolved kinematics improve distance measurements.

Error estimates of ~6% on $D_{\Delta t}$ and ~10% on $D_{d}$.

Potential to measure $H_0$ with 1-2% precision.

Abstract

Strongly gravitational lensed quasars can be used to measure the so-called time-delay distance $D_{\Delta t}$, and thus the Hubble constant $H_0$ and other cosmological parameters. Stellar kinematics of the deflector galaxy play an essential role in this measurement by: (i) helping break the mass-sheet degeneracy; (ii) determining in principle the angular diameter distance $D_{\rm d}$ to the deflector and thus further improving the cosmological constraints. In this paper we simulate observations of lensed quasars with integral field spectrographs and show that spatially resolved kinematics of the deflector enable further progress by helping break the mass-anisotropy degeneracy. Furthermore, we use our simulations to obtain realistic error estimates with current/upcoming instruments like OSIRIS on Keck and NIRSPEC on the James Webb Space Telescope for both distances (typically $\sim6$ per cent on $D_{\Delta t}$ and $\sim10$ per cent on $D_{\rm d}$). We use the error estimates to compute cosmological forecasts for the sample of nine lenses that currently have well measured time delays and deep Hubble Space Telescope images and for a sample of 40 lenses that is projected to be available in a few years through follow-up of candidates found in ongoing wide field surveys. We find that $H_0$ can be measured with 2 per cent (1 per cent) precision from nine (40) lenses in a flat $\Lambda$cold dark matter cosmology. We study several other cosmological models beyond the flat $\Lambda$cold dark matter model and find that time-delay lenses with spatially resolved kinematics can greatly improve the precision of the cosmological parameters measured by cosmic microwave background data.