Journal article
A gravitationally lensed quasar with quadruple images separated by 14.62 arcseconds
N Inada, M Oguri, B Pindor, JF Hennawi, KL Chiu, W Zheng, SI Ichikawa, MD Gregg, RH Becker, Y Suto, MA Strauss, EL Turner, CR Keeton, J Annis, FJ Castander, DJ Eisenstein, JA Frieman, M Fukugita, JE Gunn, DE Johnston Show all
NATURE | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2003
DOI: 10.1038/nature02153
Abstract
Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for the study of the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. The cold-dark-matter model of the formation of large-scale structures (that is, clusters of galaxies and even larger assemblies) predicts the existence of quasars gravitationally lensed by concentrations of dark matter so massive that the quasar images would be split by over 7 arcsec. Numerous searches for large-separation lensed quasars have, however, been unsuccessful. All of the roughly 70 lensed quasars known, including the first lensed quasar discovered, have smaller separations that can be explained in terms of galaxy-scale concentrations of baryonic matter. Although gravitational..
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