Revisiting Studies of the Statistical Property of a Strong Gravitational Lens System and Model-independent Constraint on the Curvature of the Universe

Abstract

In this paper we use a recently compiled data set, which comprises 118 galactic-scale strong gravitational lensing (SGL) systems to constrain the statistic property of SGL system, as well as the curvature of universe without assuming any fiducial cosmological model. Based on the singular isothermal ellipsoid (SIE) model of SGL system, we obtain that the constrained curvature parameter $\Omega_{\rm k}$ is close to zero from the SGL data, which is consistent with the latest result of planck measurement. More interestingly, we find that the parameter $f$ in the SIE model is strongly correlated with the curvature $\Omega_{\rm k}$. Neglecting this correlation in the analysis will significantly overestimate the constraining power of SGL data on the curvature. Furthermore, the obtained constraint on $f$ is different from previous results: $f=1.105\pm0.030$ ($68\%$ C.L.), which means that the standard singular isothermal sphere (SIS) model ($f=1$) is disfavored by the current SGL data at more than $3\sigma$ confidence level. We also divide the whole SGL data into two parts according to the centric stellar velocity dispersion $\sigma_{\rm c}$ and find that the larger value of $\sigma_{\rm c}$ the subsample has, the more favored the standard SIS model is. Finally, we extend the SIE model by assuming the power-law density profiles for the total mass density, $\rho=\rho_0(r/r_0)^{-\alpha}$, and luminosity density, $\nu=\nu_0(r/r_0)^{-\delta}$, and obtain the constraints on the power-law indexes: $\alpha=1.95\pm0.04$ and $\delta=2.40\pm0.13$ at 68\% confidence level. When assuming the power-law index $\alpha=\delta=\gamma$, this scenario is totally disfavored by the current SGL data, $\chi^2_{\rm min,\gamma} - \chi^2_{\rm min,SIE} \simeq 53$.