Kernel Regression Estimates of Time Delays between Gravitationally Lensed Fluxes
, Sultanah AL Otaibi . 2016
Strongly lensed variable quasars can serve as precise cosmological probes, provided that time delays between the image fluxes can be accurately measured. A number of methods have been proposed to address this problem. In this paper, we explore in detail a new approach based on kernel regression estimates, which is able to estimate a single time delay given several datasets for the same quasar. We develop realistic artificial data sets in order to carry out controlled experiments to test of performance of this new approach. We also test our method on real data from strongly lensed quasar Q0957+561 and compare our estimates against existing results.
We test whether a more principled treatment of delay estimation in lensed photon streams, compared with the standard kernel estimation method, can have benefits of more accurate (less biased) and/…
Strongly lensed variable quasars can serve as precise cosmological probes, provided that time delays between the image fluxes can be accurately measured. A number of methods have been proposed to…