New method to revisit the gravitational lensing analysis of the Bullet Cluster using radio waves

Abstract

Gravitational lensing studies of the Bullet Cluster suggested convincingly in favor of the existence of dark matter. However, it was performed without the knowledge of the original orientation of each galaxy before gravitational lensing. A potential improvement to this issue lies in the measurement of the original orientation from the polarization direction of radio waves emitted from each galaxy. In this context, Francfort et al. derived a formula that can utilize the information about the original orientation of each galaxy to obtain what is called shear. However, we demonstrate that shear in their formula should be replaced by reduced shear when the change in sizes of images of galaxies is taken into account. As the previous gravitational lensing analysis of the Bullet Cluster used reduced shear, we suggest applying our improved formula directly for the reanalysis once we obtain the polarization direction of radio waves. In particular, we show that our new formula can yield a more accurate analysis than the previous one, if the polarization direction can be measured more precisely than 10°. Moreover, the approach discussed in this work is generically applicable to the gravitational lensing analysis of clusters, not only limited to the Bullet Cluster. © 2023 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab