First measurement of narrow-line flux ratios for a lensed quasar with JWST/NIRSpec IFS

Abstract

Strong gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of dark matter (DM) structure on subgalactic scales: in particular, statistics of flux-ratio anomalies (discrepancies between mass model predictions and observed flux ratios) in quadruply imaged quasars are sensitive to perturbations by low-mass DM halos down to $\sim 10^6 M_\odot$. Studies leveraging these anomalies require high-quality flux-ratio measurements from an emission region insensitive to stellar microlensing. In this paper, we present the first measurement of narrow-line flux ratios for a gravitationally lensed quasar using JWST/NIRSpec with Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS), targeting the well-studied system RXJ1131$-$1231. Flux ratios are extracted from the [S III] 9071/9533 $Å$ narrow-line doublet - the first use of this doublet for substructure studies - by performing a full lens model reconstruction to isolate the unresolved nuclear emission from extended narrow-line emission. The resulting spectra are jointly modeled using $\texttt{lensqso-specfit}$, a publicly available software package introduced in this work for the simultaneous spectral fitting of multiple lensed quasar images. We achieve $\sim$ 5% uncertainties on the flux ratios, comparable to the precision of JWST/MIRI warm dust measurements, and detect a clear anomaly in the cusp images relative to a standard smooth lens model. Our results are in good agreement with previous narrow-line measurements and broadly consistent with JWST/MIRI warm dust flux ratios, with marginal ($\sim 2-3σ$) deviations. We demonstrate how such shifts between differently sized emission regions may be enhanced by small ($\sim 10$ pc) spatial offsets. Our method is generalizable to other systems with existing or future IFS observations, and the combination of narrow-line and warm dust flux ratios offers a new avenue for improving DM constraints with flux-ratio anomaly statistics.