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Results from the CASTLES Survey of Gravitational Lenses

C. S. Kochanek, E. E. Falco, C. D. Impey, J. Lehar, B. A. McLeod, H. -W. Rix

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9811111

Abstract

We show that most gravitational lenses lie on the passively evolving fundamental plane for early-type galaxies. For burst star formation models (1 Gyr of star formation, then quiescence) in low Omega0 cosmologies, the stellar populations of the lens galaxies must have formed at zf > 2. Typical lens galaxies contain modest amounts of patchy extinction, with a median differential extinction for the optical (radio) selected lenses of E(B-V) = 0.04 (0.07) mag. The dust can be used to determine both extinction laws and lens redshifts. For example, the zl=0.96 elliptical lens in MG0414+0534 has an RV=1.7 +/- 0.1 mean extinction law. Arc and ring images of the quasar and AGN source host galaxies are commonly seen in NICMOS H band observations. The hosts are typically blue, L < L* galaxies.

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