Source Ellipticity and the Statistics of Lensed Arcs

Abstract

The statistics of gravitationally lensed arcs, which can be used for a variety of cosmological tests, are sensitive to the intrinsic shapes of the source galaxies. I present an analytic formalism that makes it simple to include elliptical sources in analytic calculations of lens statistics. For cuspy lens models, sources with an axis ratio of 2:1 enhance the total number of arcs longer than 10:1 by a factor of order two, while modestly decreasing the number ratio of radial arcs to tangential arcs. Source ellipticity is therefore an important systematic effect in detailed quantitative studies, but it should not hinder cosmological applications such as attempts to constrain cluster dark matter profiles with arc statistics.