Speaker
Description
Strong gravitational lensing has proven to be a promising tool for detecting low-mass haloes through observing perturbations in the lensing potential, therefore allowing the testing of different dark matter (DM) models by comparing the theoretical predictions for the abundance of such haloes in different DM models with observations. However, to robustly constrain the mass function of low-mass haloes, it is important to distinguish between various sources of perturbations to the smooth potential. In this talk, I present a systematic study of the degeneracy in the lensing effect between subhaloes and haloes that lie along the line of sight and the robustness of distinguishing between them, given the observational limits and modelling challenges. Finally, I will discuss the results of modelling two lens systems with detected perturbers using models that include field haloes.
| Abstract title | Subhaloes vs. line-of-sight haloes |
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