Orateur
Description
Strong gravitational lensing is an increasingly powerful tool for cosmological studies. In particular, the weak-lensing shear induced by large-scale structures along the line of sight (LOS) of a strong lens can itself be treated as an observable, carrying information about the matter distribution in the Universe and thus representing a valuable cosmological probe.
While the theoretical feasibility of this approach has been demonstrated, its practical observability and the precision achievable in realistic settings remain largely unexplored.
In this work, I investigate these questions using simulated lenses. Rather than relying solely on analytical mass models, I developed a pipeline to extract lens galaxies from state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations and generate mock lensed images, which are then analysed with current lens-modelling techniques. This allows us to assess the impact of realistic mass distributions and modelling assumptions on the recovery of the LOS shear signal.
I will present the first results of this simulation and modelling effort, and discuss the caveats and limitations of this approach.