Cosmological Constraints from the double source plane lens SDSSJ0946+1006

Abstract

We present constraints on the equation of state of dark energy, $w$, and the total matter density, $\Omega_{\mathrm{M}}$, derived from the double-source-plane strong lens SDSSJ0946+1006, the first cosmological measurement with a galaxy-scale double-source-plane lens. By modelling the primary lens with an elliptical power-law mass distribution, and including perturbative lensing by the first source, we are able to constrain the cosmological scaling factor in this system to be $\beta^{-1}=1.404 \pm 0.016$, which implies $\Omega_{\mathrm{M}}= 0.33_{-0.26}^{+0.33}$ for a flat $\Lambda$ cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) cosmology. Combining with a cosmic microwave background prior from Planck, we find $w$ = $-1.17^{+0.20}_{-0.21}$ assuming a flat $w$CDM cosmology. This inference shifts the posterior by 1${\sigma}$ and improves the precision by 30 per cent with respect to Planck alone, and demonstrates the utility of combining simple, galaxy-scale multiple-source-plane lenses with other cosmological probes to improve precision and test for residual systematic biases.