Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Lensing Shear Patterns of Small-Scale Structure in Galaxy Clusters

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2019

Abstract

The analysis of weak lensing of background galaxies has proven to be invaluable for mapping the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters. This approach is well suited for smooth continuous matter distributions, yet in reality, clusters contain individual galaxies, which form highly localized concentrations of matter.

These can significantly affect local lensing quantities such as the components of shear, and thus influence the estimation of dark matter distribution. We study such phenomena using a simple model that consists of a continuous matter distribution with a Navarro-Frenk-White profile representing the cluster halo, and a point mass perturbation representing an individual galaxy.