Identifying Rings in IFU Surveys

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method using image subtraction and computer vision to identify Einstein rings in IFU surveys, enhancing the detection of gravitational lensing features in galaxy surveys.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel approach for detecting gravitational lensing arcs in IFU survey data, applicable across multiple current and future surveys.

Findings

Successfully applied to MaNGA survey data

Potentially applicable to other IFU surveys like SAMI and CALIFA

Improves detection of gravitational lensing features

Abstract

Gravitational lensings provide unique opportunities to study distant galaxies. Despite their usefulness, only a dozens of gravitational arcs have been reported up-to-date, hampered by the low resolution imaging from ground-based surveys. We propose a novel method to identify Einstein rings/arcs in the IFU surveys via image subtraction and computer vision techniques. We use the recent discovered strong lens system in the MaNGA survey as a proof-of-concept; in addition to MaNGA, our approach is applicable to other IFU surveys, such as SAMI, CALIFA, Hector, DESI, and 4MOST.