The cosmic distance duality relation in light of the time-delayed strong gravitational lensing

TL;DR

This study tests the cosmic distance duality relation using high-precision gravitational lensing data and supernovae, confirming its validity at current precision levels and projecting future improvements with upcoming surveys.

Contribution

It introduces a novel test of the DDR using time-delayed strong gravitational lensing and supernova data, employing Gaussian process reconstruction to reduce errors.

Findings

DDR is confirmed at 1σ confidence level with current data.

Future surveys like LSST could improve DDR precision to 1% with 100 SGL systems.

The method effectively constrains potential deviations from standard cosmology.

Abstract

The cosmic distance duality relation (DDR), which links the angular diameter distance and the luminosity distance, is a cornerstone in modern cosmology. Any deviation from DDR may indicate new physics beyond the standard cosmological model. In this paper, we use four high-precision time-delayed strong gravitational lensing (SGL) systems provided by the H0LiCOW to test the validity of DDR. To this end, we directly compare the angular diameter distances from these SGL systems and the luminosity distances from the latest Pantheon+ compilation of SNe Ia. In order to reduce the statistical errors arising from redshift matching, the Gaussian process method is applied to reconstruct the distance-redshift relation from the Pantheon+ dataset. We parameterize the possible violation of DDR in three different models. It is found that all results confirm the validity of DDR at 1$\sigma$ confidence level. Additionally, Monte Carlo simulations based on the future LSST survey indicate that the precision of DDR could reach $10^{-2}$ level with 100 SGL systems.