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Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Lens Modeling and Cosmological Inference from an Impure Sample of Galaxy-Galaxy Strong Lenses

  • Philip Holloway1,2
  • Aprajita Verma2
  • Philip J Marshall3,4
  • Padmavathi Venkatraman5
  • Sydney Erickson3,4
  • Tian Li1
  • Simon Birrer6
  • Steven Dillmann3,4
  • Thomas E Collett1
6 affiliations
  1. 1Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth , Burnaby Road, Portsmouth ,
  2. 2University of Oxford Department of Physics, , Keble Road, Oxford ,
  3. 3Stanford University Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Department of Physics, , Stanford, CA 94309 ,
  4. 4SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory , 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025 ,
  5. 5University of Illinois Urbana-Champagin Department of Astronomy, , Urbana, IL 61801 ,
  6. 6Stony Brook University Department of Physics and Astronomy, , Stony Brook, NY 11794 ,
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Abstract

The start of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time marks a new era for strong lensing science, where the number of strong lenses identified is expected to increase to ∼100 000. In this paper we use a neural network to determine the precision with which lens parameters can be determined, using realistic simulated LSST lensed systems. We find that the Einstein radius can be measured with a mean precision of 3.7% with calibrated uncertainties accurately reflecting the corresponding measurement error. Based on the performance of current strong lens classifiers, the ∼100, 000 detectable strong lenses are expected to be accompanied by a similar or larger number of false positives (non-lenses). In readiness for this we introduce a formalism, termed ‘COSMIC-BEAMS’, to infer cosmological parameters while accounting for contamination by false positives. As a proof-of-concept, using simulated LSST measurements of the Einstein radii of a realistic and impure sample of photometric lens systems, i.e. those without spectroscopic confirmation, we find that the cosmological parameters Ωm, Ω Λ, and w can be measured to a precision of 0.1, 0.03 and 0.15 respectively for a wCDM cosmology. We demonstrate that unbiased cosmological parameters can be inferred even in strong lens samples contaminated by 50% false positives, and that the photometric dataset of 100 000 strong lenses will provide equivalent w-precision to 2500 − 3500 spectroscopic systems.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{holloway2026lens,
  title = {{Lens Modeling and Cosmological Inference from an Impure Sample of Galaxy-Galaxy Strong Lenses}},
  author = {Philip Holloway and Aprajita Verma and Philip J Marshall and Padmavathi Venkatraman and Sydney Erickson and Tian Li and Simon Birrer and Steven Dillmann and Thomas E Collett},
  journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1093/mnras/stag2048},
  url = {https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag2048/9003266},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Lens Modeling and Cosmological Inference from an Impure Sample of Galaxy-Galaxy Strong Lenses
AU  - Philip Holloway
AU  - Aprajita Verma
AU  - Philip J Marshall
AU  - Padmavathi Venkatraman
AU  - Sydney Erickson
AU  - Tian Li
AU  - Simon Birrer
AU  - Steven Dillmann
AU  - Thomas E Collett
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/27
JO  - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
DO  - 10.1093/mnras/stag2048
UR  - https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag2048/9003266
AB  - The start of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time marks a new era for strong lensing science, where the number of strong lenses identified is expected to increase to ∼100 000. In this paper we use a neural network to determine the precision with which lens parameters can be determined, using realistic simulated LSST lensed systems. We find that the Einstein radius can be measured with a mean precision of 3.7% with calibrated uncertainties accurately reflecting the corresponding measurement error. Based on the performance of current strong lens classifiers, the ∼100, 000 detectable strong lenses are expected to be accompanied by a similar or larger number of false positives (non-lenses). In readiness for this we introduce a formalism, termed ‘COSMIC-BEAMS’, to infer cosmological parameters while accounting for contamination by false positives. As a proof-of-concept, using simulated LSST measurements of the Einstein radii of a realistic and impure sample of photometric lens systems, i.e. those without spectroscopic confirmation, we find that the cosmological parameters Ωm, Ω _Λ, and w can be measured to a precision of 0.1, 0.03 and 0.15 respectively for a wCDM cosmology. We demonstrate that unbiased cosmological parameters can be inferred even in strong lens samples contaminated by 50% false positives, and that the photometric dataset of 100 000 strong lenses will provide equivalent w-precision to 2500 − 3500 spectroscopic systems.
SN  - 0035-8711
SN  - 1365-2966
ER  -