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Narayan Khadka

Publications and source records attributed to Narayan Khadka.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Strong Lensing Tomography: Double and pseudo multi-source plane strong gravitational lensing to constrain dark energy

Tomographic measurements of gravitational lensing with different lens and source redshift distributions contain crucial information about the universe's relative expansion rate, and hence dark energy. While this technique is well-established in weak lensing, its application to strong lensing has traditionally focused on Double Source Plane Lenses (DSPLs). However, DSPLs are exceedingly rare and fundamentally limited by the Mass-Sheet Degeneracy (MSD), a systematic uncertainty underexplored in previous literature. To overcome these challenges, we introduce Pseudo Double-Source Plane Lenses (PDSPLs): pairs of independent single-source plane lenses with self-similar deflectors. This generalizes the DSPL formalism to the $\sim 10^5$ galaxy-galaxy lenses expected from upcoming surveys like LSST, Euclid, and Roman. Unlike true DSPLs, PDSPLs are free from the intermediate source mass problem by construction, eliminating the associated secondary MSD and the need for multi-plane ray tracing. We incorporate the deflector galaxy's MSD into a hierarchical forecasting framework, demonstrating that this degeneracy severely degrades constraints from small DSPL samples, thus motivating our PDSPL statistical approach. We forecast constraints on the dark energy equation of state under a Flat $w_0w_a$CDM cosmology. The LSST 10-year photometric sample alone achieves $\sigma(w_0) \sim 0.45$, while simultaneously constraining the MSD parameter and deflector power-law slope to $\sim 2\%$. Adding a prior $\mathcal{N}(0.3, 0.05)$ on $\Omega_{\rm m}$ -- simulating combination with external probes like CMB, BAO, or SNe Ia -- tightens this to $\sigma(w_0) \sim 0.29$, competitive with current Stage III weak lensing analyses. Notably, this massive photometric sample outperforms smaller subsets with precise spectroscopic follow-up (e.g., from 4MOST), confirming statistical volume dominates over per-pair precision.

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An overview of stray light findings and interpretation during on-sky commissioning of LSSTCam

Wide-field telescopes are intrinsically difficult to shield from unwanted stray and scattered light, while the search to identify sources of contaminating light is frequently a challenging task. The Vera C.~Rubin Observatory, which achieved its first photon with the LSST Camera (LSSTCam) on April 15, 2025, will initiate a revolutionary era for the study of dark matter, dark energy, the transient sky, the Solar System, and the Milky Way. LSSTCam will provide near seeing-limited images of the sky in six bands ($u,g,r,i,z,y$) over a $3.^\circ 5$-diameter field of view, and over the course of a decade, it will execute the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). This work provides an overview of the dedicated stray and scattered light test campaign that has been undertaken since the start of Rubin commissioning. In particular, we highlight the processes used to characterize, model, and mitigate stray light present in LSSTCam images. The Rubin commissioning team created a series of testing and analysis tools to track stray light artifacts from their initial discovery through reproduction with timely observations, simulation using ray tracing to identify opto-mechanical origins, and finally devising corrective actions. The complex stray light features encountered by Rubin provide a wealth of experience for the future wide-field and extremely wide-field observatories. This work covers the many stages of a long journey that started with conceiving an innovative and challenging optical design, followed by the engineering and system engineering efforts to build it, to finally delivering an optimized and revolutionary cutting-edge facility.

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The Rubin Observatory Target-of-Opportunity System in the First Year of Operations

The NSF/DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a discovery machine, with unprecedented survey speed, which can be used to identify exotic astrophysical transients. In its prime mission, the ten year Legacy Survey of Space and Time will use 3% of its total time for Target of Opportunity observations, which includes response to gravitational wave events, high energy neutrinos, potentially-hazardous asteroids, and other astrophysical phenomena. Target of Opportunity observations exist outside of the usual LSST operational mode, requiring special attention to maximize performance. We review the Rubin Target of Opportunity system during its first year of Rubin Observatory operations, the Targets of Opportunity pursued since LSST first light, and the overall efficiency of the system.

astro-ph.IM

SLSim: a strong lensing population simulation package

Gravitational lensing offers unique insights into cosmology by bending light around massive objects. Strong gravitational lensing, in particular, produces magnified and often multiple images of distant sources, crucial for precise cosmological measurements and understanding the distribution of dark matter in the universe. Current studies are limited by the number of strong gravitational lenses. From upcoming cosmological surveys, we anticipate observing a several orders of magnitude increase in the number of lenses, for both static and transient phenomena. However, detecting and analyzing these events from vast surveys like Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) presents significant challenges. To prepare for these challenges, we introduce SLSim, a versatile simulation tool tailored for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. SLSim integrates advanced astrophysical models with computational efficiency to generate synthetic strong lens populations under realistic observational conditions. SLSim simulates static and variable lensing scenarios, essential for cosmological studies, training and testing lens search and data analysis pipelines. This paper details SLSim,'s design and implementation, emphasizing its modularity and capabilities across various astrophysical regimes. Validation against observational data and existing simulations confirms SLSim's accuracy in reproducing observed lensing phenomena. SLSim is publicly available at https://github.com/LSST-strong-lensing/slsim, and we anticipate continued development and expansion of its capabilities. Users are encouraged to check the repository for updates and to contribute to ongoing community efforts in strong lensing simulations.

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Investigating the Dark Energy Constraint from Strongly Lensed AGN at LSST-Scale

Strongly lensed Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) with an observable time delay can be used to constrain the expansion history of the Universe through time-delay cosmography (TDC). As the sample of time-delay lenses grows to statistical size, with $\mathcal{O}$(1000) lensed AGN forecast to be observed by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), there is an emerging opportunity to use TDC as an independent probe of dark energy. To take advantage of this statistical sample, we implement a scalable hierarchical inference tool which computes the cosmological likelihood for hundreds of strong lenses simultaneously. With this new technique, we investigate the cosmological constraining power from a simulation of the full LSST sample. We start from individual lenses, and emulate the full joint hierarchical TDC analysis, including image-based modeling, time-delay measurement, velocity dispersion measurement, and external convergence prediction. We fully account for the mass-sheet and mass-anisotropy degeneracies. We assume a sample of 800 lenses, with varying levels of follow-up fidelity based on existing campaigns. With our baseline assumptions, within a flexible $w_0w_a$CDM cosmology, we simultaneously forecast a $\sim$2.5% constraint on H0 and a dark energy figure of merit (DE FOM) of 6.7. We show that by expanding the sample from 50 lenses with IFU kinematics to include 750 lenses with plausible LSST time-delay measurements, we improve the forecasted DE FOM by nearly a factor of 3, demonstrating the value of incorporating this portion of the sample. We also investigate different follow-up campaign strategies, and find significant improvements in the DE FOM with additional stellar kinematics measurements and higher-precision time-delay measurements. We also demonstrate how the redshift configuration of time-delay lenses impacts constraining power in $w_0w_a$CDM.

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Lens Model Accuracy in the Expected LSST Lensed AGN Sample

Strong gravitational lensing of active galactic nuclei (AGN) enables measurements of cosmological parameters through time-delay cosmography (TDC). With data from the upcoming LSST survey, we anticipate using a sample of O(1000) lensed AGN for TDC. To prepare for this dataset and enable this measurement, we construct and analyze a realistic mock sample of 1300 systems drawn from the OM10 (Oguri & Marshall 2010) catalog of simulated lenses with AGN sources at $z<3.1$ in order to test a key aspect of the analysis pipeline, that of the lens modeling. We realize the lenses as power law elliptical mass distributions and simulate 5-year LSST i-band coadd images. From every image, we infer the lens mass model parameters using neural posterior estimation (NPE). Focusing on the key model parameters, $\theta_E$ (the Einstein Radius) and $\gamma_{lens}$ (the projected mass density profile slope), with consistent mass-light ellipticity correlations in test and training data, we recover $\theta_E$ with less than 1% bias per lens, 6.5% precision per lens and $\gamma_{lens}$ with less than 3% bias per lens, 8% precision per lens. We find that lens light subtraction prior to modeling is only useful when applied to data sampled from the training prior. If emulated deconvolution is applied to the data prior to modeling, precision improves across all parameters by a factor of 2. Finally, we combine the inferred lens mass models using Bayesian Hierarchical Inference to recover the global properties of the lens sample with less than 1% bias.

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Analyzing Line-of-sight selection biases in galaxy-scale strong lensing with external convergence and shear

The upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will dramatically increase the number of strong gravitational lensing systems, requiring precise modeling of line-of-sight (LOS) effects to mitigate biases in lensing observations and cosmological inferences. We develop a method to construct joint distributions of external convergence ($\kappa_{\mathrm{ext}}$) and shear ($\gamma_{\mathrm{ext}}$) for strong lensing LOS by aggregating large-scale structure simulations with high-resolution halo renderings and non-linear correction. Our approach captures both smooth background matter and perturbations from halos, enabling accurate modeling of LOS effects. We apply non-linear LOS corrections to $\kappa_{\mathrm{ext}}$ and $\gamma_{\mathrm{ext}}$ that address the non-additive lensing effects caused by objects along the LOS in strong lensing. We find that, with a minimum image separation of $1.0^{\prime\prime}$, non-linear LOS correction due to the presence of a dominant deflector slightly increases the ratio of quadruple to double lenses; this non-linear LOS correction also introduces systematic biases of $\sim 0.1\%$ for galaxy-AGN lenses in the inferred Hubble constant ($H_0$) if not accounted for. We also observe a $0.66\%$ bias for galaxy-galaxy lenses on $H_0$, and even larger biases up to $1.02\%$ for galaxy-AGN systems if LOS effects are not accounted for. These results highlight the importance of LOS for precision cosmology. The publicly available code and datasets provide tools for incorporating LOS effects in future analyses.

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The Roman View of Strong Gravitational Lenses

Galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lenses can constrain dark matter models and the Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmological paradigm at sub-galactic scales. Currently, there is a dearth of images of these rare systems with high signal-to-noise and angular resolution. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (hereafter, Roman), scheduled for launch in late 2026, will play a transformative role in strong lensing science with its planned wide-field surveys. With its remarkable 0.281 square degree field of view and diffraction-limited angular resolution of ~0.1 arcsec, Roman is uniquely suited to characterizing dark matter substructure from a robust population of strong lenses. We present a yield simulation of detectable strong lenses in Roman's planned High Latitude Wide Area Survey (HLWAS). We simulate a population of galaxy-galaxy strong lenses across cosmic time with Cold Dark Matter subhalo populations, select those detectable in the HLWAS, and generate simulated images accounting for realistic Wide Field Instrument detector effects. For a fiducial case of single 146-second exposures, we predict around 160,000 detectable strong lenses in the HLWAS, of which about 500 will have sufficient signal-to-noise to be amenable to detailed substructure characterization. We investigate the effect of the variation of the point-spread function across Roman's field of view on detecting individual subhalos and the suppression of the subhalo mass function at low masses. Our simulation products are available to support strong lens science with Roman, such as training neural networks and validating dark matter substructure analysis pipelines.

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A halo model approach for mock catalogs of time-variable strong gravitational lenses

Time delays in both galaxy- and cluster-scale strong gravitational lenses have recently attracted a lot of attention in the context of the Hubble tension. Future wide-field cadenced surveys, such as the LSST, are anticipated to discover strong lenses across various scales. We generate mock catalogs of strongly lensed QSOs and SNe on galaxy-, group-, and cluster-scales based on a halo model that incorporates dark matter halos, galaxies, and subhalos. For the upcoming LSST survey, we predict that approximately 4000 lensed QSOs and 200 lensed SNe with resolved multiple images will be discovered. Among these, about 80 lensed QSOs and 10 lensed SNe will have maximum image separations larger than 10 arcsec, which roughly correspond to cluster-scale strong lensing. We find that adopting the Chabrier stellar IMF instead of the fiducial Salpeter IMF reduces the predicted number of strong lenses approximately by half, while the distributions of lens and source redshifts and image separations are not significantly changed. In addition to mock catalogs of multiple-image lens systems, we create mock catalogs of highly magnified systems, including both multiple-image and single-image systems. We find that such highly magnified systems are typically produced by massive galaxies, but non-negligible fraction of them are located in the outskirt of galaxy groups and clusters. Furthermore, we compare subsamples of our mock catalogs with lensed QSO samples constructed from the SDSS and Gaia to find that our mock catalogs with the fiducial Salpeter IMF reproduce the observation quite well. In contrast, our mock catalogs with the Chabrier IMF predict a significantly smaller number of lensed QSOs compared with observations, which adds evidence that the stellar IMF of massive galaxies is Salpeter-like. Our python code SL-Hammocks as well as the mock catalogs are made available online. (abridged)

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Breaking the mass-sheet degeneracy in strong lensing mass modeling with weak lensing observations

The Hubble constant ($H_0$), a crucial parameter in cosmology, quantifies the expansion rate of the universe so its precise measurement is important to understand the fundamental dynamics of our evolving universe. One of the major limitations of measuring $H_0$ using time-delay cosmography is the presence of the mass-sheet degeneracy (MSD) in the lens mass modeling. We propose and quantitatively assess the use of galaxy-galaxy shear measurements to break the MSD in the strong lensing mass modeling. We use stacked galaxy-galaxy lensing profiles and corresponding covariance matrices from Huang et al. (2022) to constrain the MSD in lens mass modeling with a highly flexible mass profile. Our analyses show that if ideally all galaxy-galaxy lensing measurements from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey can be used to constrain the MSD, we can achieve $\sim 10\%$ precision on the MSD constraint. We forecast that galaxy-galaxy lensing measurements from LSST-like surveys can in general constrain the MSD with $\sim 1-3\%$ precision. Furthermore, if we push weak lensing measurements to a lower angular scale of $\sim 0.04$ $\rm Mpc$, a survey like LSST can provide $\sim 1\%$ precision on the MSD constraint, enabling a measurement of $H_0$ at the $1\%$ level. We demonstrate that galaxy-galaxy weak lensing can robustly constrain the MSD independent of stellar kinematics of the deflector, with wide-field survey data alone.

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Effect of extinction on quasar luminosity distances determined from UV and X-ray flux measurements

In Khadka et al. (2023), a sample of X-ray-detected reverberation-mapped quasars was presented and applied for the comparison of cosmological constraints inferred using two well-established relations in AGN -- the X-ray/UV luminosity ($L_{X}-L_{UV}$) relation and the broad-line region radius-luminosity ($R-L$) relation. $L_{X}-L_{UV}$ and $R-L$ luminosity distances to the same quasars exhibit a distribution of their differences that is generally asymmetric and positively shifted for the six cosmological models we consider. We demonstrate that this behaviour can be interpreted qualitatively to arise as a result of the dust extinction of UV/X-ray quasar emission. We show that the extinction always contributes to the non-zero difference between $L_{X}-L_{UV}$-based and $R-L$-based luminosity distances and we derive a linear relationship between the X-ray/UV colour index $E_{X-UV}$ and the luminosity-distance difference, which also depends on the value of the $L_{X}-L_{UV}$ relation slope. Taking into account the median and the peak values of the luminosity-distance difference distributions, the average X-ray/UV colour index falls in the range of $\overline{E}_{X-UV}=0.03-0.28$ mag for the current sample of 58 sources. This amount of extinction is typical for the majority of quasars and it can be attributed to the circumnuclear and interstellar media of host galaxies. After applying the standard hard X-ray and far-UV extinction cuts, heavily extincted sources are removed but overall the shift towards positive values persists. The effect of extinction on luminosity distances is more pronounced for the $L_{X}-L_{UV}$ relation since the extinction of UV and X-ray emissions both contribute.

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Quasar UV/X-ray relation luminosity distances are shorter than reverberation-measured radius-luminosity relation luminosity distances

We use measurements of 59/58 quasars (QSOs), over a redshift range $0.0041\leq z \leq 1.686$, to do a comparative study of the radius--luminosity ($R-L$) and X-ray$-$UV luminosity ($L_X-L_{UV}$) relations and the implication of these relations for cosmological parameter estimation. By simultaneously determining $R-L$ or $L_X-L_{UV}$ relation parameters and cosmological parameters in six different cosmological models, we find that both $R-L$ and $L_X-L_{UV}$ relations are standardizable but provide only weak cosmological parameter constraints, with $L_X-L_{UV}$ relation data favoring larger current non-relativistic matter density parameter $Ω_{m0}$ values than $R-L$ relation data and most other available data. We derive $L_X-L_{UV}$ and $R-L$ luminosity distances for each of the sources in the six cosmological models and find that $L_X-L_{UV}$ relation luminosity distances are shorter than $R-L$ relation luminosity distances as well as standard flat $Λ$CDM model luminosity distances. This explains why $L_X-L_{UV}$ relation QSO data favor larger $Ω_{m0}$ values than do $R-L$ relation QSO data or most other cosmological measurements. While our sample size is small and only spans a small $z$ range, these results indicate that more work is needed to determine whether the $L_X-L_{UV}$ relation can be used as a cosmological probe.

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Accretion disks, quasars and cosmology: meandering towards understanding

As Setti & Woltjer noted back in 1973, quasars could be used to construct the Hubble diagram but the actual application was not that straightforward. It took years to implement the idea successfully. Most of the ways to use quasars for cosmology now require an advanced understanding of their structure, step by step. We briefly review this progress, with unavoidable personal bias, and concentrate on bright unobscured sources. We will mention the problem of the gas flow character close to the innermost stable circular orbit close to the black hole, discussed 50 years ago, which later led to the development of the slim disk scenario, but was recently revived in the context of Magnetically Arrested Disks (MAD) and Standard and Normal Evolution (SANE) disk models. We also discuss the hot/warm corona issue, which is still under discussion and complicates the analysis of the X-ray reflection. We present the scenario of the formation of the low ionization part of the Broad Line Region as a mostly failed wind powered by radiation pressure acting on dust (FRADO - Failed Radiatively Driven Dusty Outflow model). Next, we discuss the cosmological constraints that are currently achievable with quasars, mostly concentrating on light echo methods (continuum time delays and spectral line time delays with respect to the continuum) which are (or should be) incorporating the progress mentioned above. Finally, we briefly mention future prospects in this direction.

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Consistency study of high- and low-accreting Mg ii quasars: No significant effect of the Fe ii to Mg ii flux ratio on the radius-luminosity relation dispersion

We use observations of 66 reverberation-measured \Mgii\ quasars (QSOs) in the redshift range $0.36 \leq z \leq 1.686$ -- a subset of the 78 QSOs we previously studied that also have \rfe\ (flux ratio parameter of UV \Feii\ to \Mgii\ that is used as an accretion-rate proxy) measurements -- to simultaneously constrain cosmological model parameters and QSO 2-parameter and 3-parameter radius-luminosity ($R-L$) relation parameters in six different cosmological models. We find that these QSO $R-L$ relation parameters are independent of the assumed cosmological model and so these QSOs are standardizable through the $R-L$ relations. Also: (1) With the 2-parameter $R-L$ relation, we find that the low-\rfe\ and high-\rfe\ data subsets obey the same $R-L$ relation within the error bars. (2) Extending the 2-parameter $R-L$ relation to a 3-parameter one does not result in the hoped-for reduction in the intrinsic dispersion of the $R-L$ relation. (3) Neither of the 3-parameter $R-L$ relations provide a significantly better fit to the measurements than does the 2-parameter $R-L$ relation. These are promising results for the on-going development of \Mgii\ cosmological probes. The first and third of these results differ significantly from those we found elsewhere from analyses of reverberation-measured \hb\ QSOs.

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Do reverberation-measured H$β$ quasars provide a useful test of cosmology?

We use 118 H$β$ quasar (QSO) observations in the redshift range $0.0023 \leq z \leq 0.89$ to simultaneously constrain cosmological model parameters and QSO 2-parameter radius-luminosity ($R-L$) relation parameters in six different cosmological models. We find that the $R-L$ relation parameters for these QSOs are independent of the assumed cosmology so these QSOs seem to be standardizable through the $R-L$ relation (although there is a complication that might render this untrue). Cosmological constraints obtained using these QSOs are weak, more favor currently decelerated cosmological expansion, and typically are in $\sim 2σ$ tension with those obtained from a joint analysis of baryon acoustic oscillation and Hubble parameter measurements. Extending the $R-L$ relation to a 3-parameter one to try to correct for the accretion rate effect does not result in a reduction of the cosmological constraints discrepancy nor does it result in the hoped-for significant reduction of the intrinsic scatter of the $R-L$ relation.

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Using quasar and gamma-ray burst measurements to constrain cosmological dark energy models

Observational evidence for the accelerated expansion of the universe requires dark energy for its explanation if general relativity is an accurate model of gravity. However, dark energy is a mysterious quantity and we do not know much about its nature so understanding dark energy is an exciting scientific challenge. Cosmological dark energy models are fairly well tested in the low and high redshift parts of the universe. The highest of the low redshift, $z\sim2.3$, region is probed by baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements and the only high redshift probe is the cosmic microwave background anisotropy which probes the $z\sim1100$ part of redshift space. In the intermediate redshift range $2.3 < z < 1100$ there are only a handful of observational probes and cosmological models are poorly tested in this region. In this thesis we constrain three pairs of general relativistic cosmological dark energy models using observational data which reach beyond the current BAO limit. We use quasar X-ray and UV flux measurements, the current version of these data span $0.009 \leq z \leq 7.5413$. We have discovered that most of these data cannot be standardized using the proposed method. However, the lower redshift part, $z \lesssim 1.5-1.7$, of these data are standardizable and can be used to derive lower-$z$ cosmological constraints. Another data set we use are gamma-ray burst measurements which span $0.3399 \leq z \leq 8.2$. Cosmological constraints derived from these data are significantly weaker than, but consistent with, those obtained from better-established cosmological probes. We also study and standardize 78 reverberation-measured Mg II time-lag quasars in the redshift range $0.0033 \leq z \leq 1.89$ by using their radius-luminosity relation. We also study 118 reverberation-measured H$β$ time-lag quasars which span $0.0023 \leq z \leq 0.89$.

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Do quasar X-ray and UV flux measurements provide a useful test of cosmological models?

The recent compilation of quasar (QSO) X-ray and UV flux measurements include QSOs that appear to not be standardizable via the X-ray luminosity and UV luminosity ($L_X-L_{UV}$) relation and so should not be used to constrain cosmological model parameters. Here we show that the largest of seven sub-samples in this compilation, the SDSS-4XMM QSOs that contribute about 2/3 of the total QSOs, have $L_X-L_{UV}$ relations that depend on the cosmological model assumed and also on redshift, and is the main cause of the similar problem discovered earlier for the full QSO compilation. The second and third biggest sub-samples, the SDSS-Chandra and XXL QSOs that together contribute about 30% of the total QSOs, appear standardizable, but provide only weak constraints on cosmological parameters that are not inconsistent with the standard spatially-flat $Λ$CDM model or with constraints from better-established cosmological probes.

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Standardizing Dainotti-correlated gamma-ray bursts, and using them with standardized Amati-correlated gamma-ray bursts to constrain cosmological model parameters

We show that each of the three Dainotti-correlated gamma-ray burst (GRB) data sets recently compiled by Wang et al. and Hu et al., that together probe the redshift range $0.35 \leq z \leq 5.91$, obey cosmological-model-independent Dainotti correlation relations and so are standardizable. We use these GRB data in conjunction with the best currently-available Amati-correlated GRB data, that probe $0.3399 \leq z \leq 8.2$, to constrain cosmological model parameters. The resulting cosmological constraints are weak, providing lower limits on the non-relativistic matter density parameter, mildly favoring non-zero spatial curvature, and largely consistent with currently accelerated cosmological expansion as well as with constraints determined from better-established data.

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