CaltechAUTHORS
Published November 1, 2021 | Version Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Gaia GraL: Gaia DR2 Gravitational Lens Systems. VI. Spectroscopic Confirmation and Modeling of Quadruply Imaged Lensed Quasars

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 4. ROR icon University of Lisbon
  • 5. ROR icon University of Liège
  • 6. ROR icon Laboratory of Astrophysics of Bordeaux
  • 7. ROR icon Universidade de São Paulo
  • 8. ROR icon Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
  • 9. ROR icon University of Sydney
  • 10. ROR icon University of Bonn
  • 11. ROR icon Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
  • 12. ROR icon Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences
  • 13. ROR icon University of Delhi
  • 14. ROR icon Heidelberg University
  • 15. ROR icon Louisiana State University
  • 16. ROR icon Universidade Federal de Sergipe
  • 17. ROR icon International Space Science Institute

Abstract

Combining the exquisite angular resolution of Gaia with optical light curves and WISE photometry, the Gaia Gravitational Lenses group (GraL) uses machine-learning techniques to identify candidate strongly lensed quasars, and has confirmed over two dozen new strongly lensed quasars from the Gaia Data Release 2. This paper reports on the 12 quadruply imaged quasars identified by this effort to date, which is a ∼20% increase in the total number of confirmed quadruply imaged quasars. We discuss the candidate selection, spectroscopic follow-up, and lens modeling. We also report our spectroscopic failures as an aid for future investigations.

Additional Information

© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 December 9; revised 2021 February 25; accepted 2021 March 3; published 2021 October 28. The majority of this manuscript preparation took place during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The authors would like to thank all of those who risked their lives as essential workers in order for us to safely continue our work from home. We also thank the staff at the various observatories who assisted in the acquisition of the data presented herein.We gratefully acknowledge Amy Reines, Lynne Hillenbrand, and Letizia Stanghellini for useful discussions about GraL J070006.6+121442, which was initially suggestive of an AGN in a low-z, low-Z galaxy, but subsequently identified as a Galactic planetary nebula. The work of D.S. was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. S.G.D., A.D., M.J.G., and A.M. are supported by the NSF grants AST-1518308 and AST-1815034, and the NASA grant 16-ADAP16-0232. A.K.M. acknowledges the support from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Portuguese Strategic Programme UID/FIS/00099/2019 for CENTRA and through grants SFRH/BPD/74697/2010 & PTDC/FIS-AST/31546/2017. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 787886). Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. Based on observations obtained at the Hale Telescope, Palomar Observatory as part of a continuing collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, NASA/JPL, Yale University, and the National Astronomical Observatories of China. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, on behalf of the Gemini Observatory partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). This work has made use of data from the ESA mission Gaia, processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Funding for DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of the Aladin Sky Atlas and the SIMBAD database, both developed and operated at Centre de données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS) at Strasbourg Observatory, France. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Facility: CRTS, Gaia, Gemini (GMOS), Keck:I (LRIS), NTT (EFOSC2), Palomar (DBSP), WISE, ZTF.

Attached Files

Published - Stern_2021_ApJ_921_42.pdf

Submitted - 2012.10051.pdf

Files

2012.10051.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
108163
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210224-084056817

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.10051 (URL)

Funding

NASA/JPL/Caltech
NSF
AST-1518308
NSF
AST-1815034
NASA
16-ADAP16-0232
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
UID/FIS/00099/2019
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
SFRH/BPD/74697/2010
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
PTDC/FIS-AST/31546/2017
European Research Council (ERC)
787886
W. M. Keck Foundation
Gaia Multilateral Agreement

Dates

Created
2021-02-24
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-18
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department