The Sloan Lens ACS Survey. IV: the mass density profile of early-type galaxies out to 100 effective radii

Abstract

We present a weak gravitational lensing analysis of 22 early-type strong lens galaxies, based on deep HST images obtained as part of the Sloan Lens ACS Survey. Using the most advanced techniques to control systematic uncertainties related to the variable PSF and charge transfer efficiency of the ACS, we detect weak lensing signal out to 300 kpc/h. We analyze blank control fields from the COSMOS survey in the same manner, inferring that the residual systematic uncertainty in the tangential shear is <0.3%. A joint strong and weak lensing analysis shows that the average total mass density profile is consistent with isothermal over two decades in radius (3-300 kpc/h, approximately 1-100 Reff). This finding extends by over an order of magnitude in radius previous results, based on strong lensing and/or stellar dynamics, that luminous and dark component ``conspire'' to form an isothermal mass distribution. In order to disentangle the contributions of luminous and dark matter, we fit a two-component mass model (R^1/4 + NFW) to the weak and strong lensing constraints. It provides a good fit to the data with only two free parameters; i) the average stellar mass-to-light ratio M_*/L_V=4.48 +- 0.46 hMo/Lo, in agreement with that expected for an old stellar population; ii) the average virial mass-to-light ratio M_vir/L_V = 246+101-87 hMo/Lo. [abridged]