Gravitational Lensing of the Bullet Cluster in the CCC+TL Cosmology: A Controlled Proof-of-Concept Study
Abstract
A proof-of-concept study of gravitational lensing in the Bullet Cluster under Covarying Coupling Constants plus Tired Light (CCC+TL) cosmology. Using a JWST spectroscopic catalogue of 219 cluster members and 135 gold multiple images in 49 systems from Rihtarsic et al. (2026), we construct convergence maps for CCC+TL and a simplified ΛCDM model using their respective angular-diameter distances and critical surface densities. The CCC+TL model adopts a two-parameter effective-density prescription anchored to the same virial-scale mass budget as ΛCDM, rather than fitted to multiple-image positions. The CCC+TL and ΛCDM mean-convergence bands in radial rings overlap within the propagated ± 30 % virial-mass uncertainty across all rings containing multiple images (θ≤80arcsec). On a source-plane back-projection diagnostic (αphys(zs)=αdft×β(zs)/β(zs,ref) with zs,ref=2), the unoptimised two-parameter CCC+TL pipeline yields RMS=5.22arcsec (4.63arcsec--5.91arcsec), compared with 6.82arcsec (5.75arcsec--8.09arcsec) for the ΛCDM reference. The optimised 32-parameter Lenstool reconstruction achieves an image-plane RMS of ∼ 0.41arcsec, which is not directly comparable to these source-plane values. Within the ± 30% M200 uncertainty band, the source-plane scatter ranges partially overlap. The CCC+TL effective extra-gravity distribution follows the galaxy distribution rather than X-ray gas, reproducing the qualitative morphology of the Bullet Cluster, though this agreement is partly structural as profiles center on member galaxies by construction. For the same mass, Einstein-radius scaling differs by only 1.7% between cosmologies. These results are a necessary first step toward a full image-plane likelihood test of CCC+TL.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{gupta2026gravitational,
title = {{Gravitational Lensing of the Bullet Cluster in the CCC+TL Cosmology: A Controlled Proof-of-Concept Study}},
author = {Rajendra P. Gupta and Nikolaos Samaras},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.31735},
eprint = {2610.31735},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.31735},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Gravitational Lensing of the Bullet Cluster in the CCC+TL Cosmology: A Controlled Proof-of-Concept Study
AU - Rajendra P. Gupta
AU - Nikolaos Samaras
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.31735
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.31735
AB - A proof-of-concept study of gravitational lensing in the Bullet Cluster under Covarying Coupling Constants plus Tired Light (CCC+TL) cosmology. Using a JWST spectroscopic catalogue of 219 cluster members and 135 gold multiple images in 49 systems from Rihtarsic et al. (2026), we construct convergence maps for CCC+TL and a simplified ΛCDM model using their respective angular-diameter distances and critical surface densities. The CCC+TL model adopts a two-parameter effective-density prescription anchored to the same virial-scale mass budget as ΛCDM, rather than fitted to multiple-image positions. The CCC+TL and ΛCDM mean-convergence bands in radial rings overlap within the propagated ± 30 % virial-mass uncertainty across all rings containing multiple images (θ≤80arcsec). On a source-plane back-projection diagnostic (α_phys(z_s)=α_dft×β(z_s)/β(z_s,ref) with z_s,ref=2), the unoptimised two-parameter CCC+TL pipeline yields RMS=5.22arcsec (4.63arcsec--5.91arcsec), compared with 6.82arcsec (5.75arcsec--8.09arcsec) for the ΛCDM reference. The optimised 32-parameter Lenstool reconstruction achieves an image-plane RMS of ∼ 0.41arcsec, which is not directly comparable to these source-plane values. Within the ± 30% M_200 uncertainty band, the source-plane scatter ranges partially overlap. The CCC+TL effective extra-gravity distribution follows the galaxy distribution rather than X-ray gas, reproducing the qualitative morphology of the Bullet Cluster, though this agreement is partly structural as profiles center on member galaxies by construction. For the same mass, Einstein-radius scaling differs by only 1.7% between cosmologies. These results are a necessary first step toward a full image-plane likelihood test of CCC+TL.
ER -