RELICS: A Very Large ($\theta_{E}\sim40"$) Cluster Lens -- RXC J0032.1+1808

TL;DR

This paper reports RXC J0032.1+1808 as a very large galaxy cluster lens with an Einstein radius of approximately 40 arcseconds, constructed through multiple modeling approaches, highlighting the significance of systematic uncertainties in lens modeling.

Contribution

The study introduces detailed strong lensing models of RXC J0032.1+1808 using multiple methods, revealing its exceptionally large Einstein radius and emphasizing the impact of systematic uncertainties.

Findings

Effective Einstein radius of ~40 arcseconds at z=2

Identification of multiple background galaxy images

Systematic uncertainties dominate error budget

Abstract

Extensive surveys with the \textit{Hubble Space Telescope} (HST) over the past decade, targeting some of the most massive clusters in the sky, have uncovered dozens of galaxy-cluster strong lenses. The massive cluster strong-lens scale is typically $\theta_{E}\sim10\arcsec$ to $\sim30-35\arcsec$, with only a handful of clusters known with Einstein radii $\theta_{E}\sim40\arcsec$ or above (for $z_{source}=2$, nominally). Here we report another very large cluster lens, RXC J0032.1+1808 ($z=0.3956$), the second richest cluster in the redMapper cluster catalog and the 85th most massive cluster in the Planck Sunyaev-Zel'dovich catalog. With our Light-Traces-Mass and fully parametric (dPIEeNFW) approaches, we construct strong lensing models based on 18 multiple images of 5 background galaxies newly identified in the \textit{Hubble} data mainly from the \textit{Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey} (RELICS), in addition to a known sextuply imaged system in this cluster. Furthermore, we compare these models to Lenstool and GLAFIC models that were produced independently as part of the RELICS program. All models reveal a large effective Einstein radius of $\theta_{E}\simeq40\arcsec$ ($z_{source}=2$), owing to the obvious concentration of substructures near the cluster center. Although RXC J0032.1+1808 has a very large critical area and high lensing strength, only three magnified high-redshift candidates are found within the field targeted by RELICS. Nevertheless, we expect many more high-redshift candidates will be seen in wider and deeper observations with \textit{Hubble} or \emph{JWST}. Finally, the comparison between several algorithms demonstrates that the total error budget is largely dominated by systematic uncertainties.