Maximum-entropy reconstruction of gravitational lenses using shear and/or magnification data

Abstract

We demonstrate that the maximum-entropy method for gravitational lens reconstruction presented in Bridle et al. (1998) may be applied even when only shear \emph{or} magnification information is present. We also demonstrate that the method can easily handle irregularly shaped observing fields and, because shear is a non-local function of the lensing mass, reconstructions that use shear information can successfully bridge small gaps in observations. For our simulations we use a mass density distribution that is realistic for a z=0.4 cluster of total mass around 10^15 h^-1 M_solar. Using HST-quality shear data alone, covering the area of four WFPC2 observations, we detect 60 per cent of the mass of the cluster within the area observed, despite the mass sheet degeneracy. This is qualitatively because the shear provides information about the variations in the mass distribution, and our prior includes a positivity constraint. We investigate the effect of using various sizes of observing field and find that 50 to 100 per cent of the cluster mass is detected, depending on the observing strategy and cluster shape. Finally we demonstrate how this method can cope with strong lensing regions of a mass distribution.