Lensing time delays and cosmological complementarity

Abstract

Time delays in strong gravitational lensing systems possess significant complementarity with distance measurements to determine the dark energy equation of state, as well as the matter density and Hubble constant. Time delays are most useful when observations permit detailed lens modeling and variability studies, requiring high resolution imaging, long time monitoring, and rapid cadence. We quantify the constraints possible between a sample of 150 such time delay lenses and a near term supernova program, such as might become available from an Antarctic telescope such as the KDUST and the Dark Energy Survey. Adding time delay data to supernovae plus cosmic microwave background information can improve the dark energy figure of merit by almost a factor 5 and determine the matter density Ω m to 0.004, the Hubble constant h to 0.7%, and the dark energy equation of state time variation w a to 0.26, systematics permitting. © 2011 American Physical Society.