The Carousel Lens III: Joint lens convergence and source kinematic modeling

Abstract

We introduce a new, independent modeling component to the Carousel Lens series by exploiting the spatially-resolved kinematics contained within the lensed arcs, which so far has remained rather underexplored in strong-lensing analyses. We present an end-to-end forward-modeling framework that reconstructs an integral-field spectroscopic datacube from a parameterization of the lens convergence profile together with the line-of-sight velocity, velocity dispersion, and surface brightness profiles of the unlensed source. The kinematic structure of the source acts as an additional set of ray-traceable markers distributed across every lensed image, inaccessible from imaging data alone. Furthermore, by generating an [OII] emission-line datacube, we isolate a single source redshift and remove lens and line-of-sight light contamination. We apply this framework to deep VLT/MUSE observations of the Carousel Lens, modeling the [OII] emission of the quadruply-imaged star-forming galaxy at $z_{\rm s} = 1.432$ that anchors the system's cosmography constraints. We measure an Einstein radius $θ_{\rm E} = 12.816''^{+0.005}_{-0.007}$ and a logarithmic slope $γ= 1.412^{+0.002}_{-0.002}$, tightening the statistical uncertainties on both by roughly a factor of $2-2.5$ relative to the corresponding flat emission-line map model. We find that the source galaxy exhibits a strong rotation, lies confidently along the star-forming main sequence, and has an inferred central black hole mass of $\log M_{\rm BH}/M_{\odot} = 7.89 \pm 0.51$. These results establish datacube-level forward modeling as a practical and independent route to traditional image-based lens models in the current systematics-limited regime, and one that extends naturally to this system's other lensed sources and to other lens systems.