MEASURING GALAXY MASSES USING GALAXY-GALAXY GRAVITATIONAL LENSING

TL;DR

This paper presents the first weak gravitational lensing detection of large-scale dark matter halos around individual galaxies, estimating their masses and extents through observed galaxy image distortions.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical evidence of galaxy-scale dark halos via weak lensing and estimates their properties, aligning with dynamical measurements.

Findings

Detection of tangential galaxy image distortion due to lensing

Estimated galaxy halo mass within 100h^{-1} kpc is about 10^{12} solar masses

Halo extent is at least 100h^{-1} kpc

Abstract

We report a significant detection of weak, tangential distortion of the images of cosmologically distant, faint galaxies due to gravitational lensing by foreground galaxies. A mean image polarisation of $<p>=0.011\pm 0.006$ is measured for 3202 pairs of source galaxies with magnitudes $23< r \le 24$ and lens galaxies with magnitudes $20\le r\le 23$. The signal remains strong for lens-source separations $\lo 90''$, consistent with quasi-isothermal galaxy halos extending to large radii ($\go 100h^{-1}$ kpc). Our observations thus provide the first evidence from weak gravitational lensing of large scale dark halos associated with individual galaxies. The observed polarisation is also consistent with the signal expected on the basis of simulations incorporating measured properties of local galaxies and modest extrapolations of the observed redshift distribution of faint galaxies. From the simulations we derive a best-fit halo circular velocity of $V\sim 220$ km/s and characteristic radial extent of $s \go 100h^{-1}$ kpc. Our best-fit halo parameters imply typical masses for the lens galaxies within a radius of $100h^{-1}$ kpc on the order of $1.0^{+1.1}_{-0.7}\times 10^{12}h^{-1} M_\odot$, in good agreement with recent dynamical estimates of the masses of local spiral galaxies. This is particularly encouraging as the lensing and dynamical mass estimators rely on different sets of assumptions. Contamination of the gravitational lensing signal by a population of tidally distorted satellite galaxies can be ruled out with reasonable confidence. The prospects for corroborating and improving this measurement seem good, especially using deep HST archival data.