Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 2(682), p. 711-720, 2008

DOI: 10.1086/589496

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Is Gravitational Lensing by Intercluster Filaments Always Negligible?

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Intercluster filaments negligibly contribute to the weak lensing signal in general relativity (GR), γN ~ 10−4–10−3. In the context of relativistic modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) introduced by Bekenstein, however, a single filament inclined by 45° from the line of sight can cause substantial distortion of background sources pointing toward the filament's axis [κ = γ = (1 − A−1)/2 ~ 0.01]; this is rigorous for infinitely long uniform filaments, but also qualitatively true for short filaments (~30 Mpc), and even in regions where the projected matter density of the filament is equal to zero. Since galaxies and galaxy clusters are generally embedded in filaments or are projected on such structures, this contribution complicates the interpretation of the weak lensing shear map in the context of MOND. While our analysis is of mainly theoretical interest providing order-of-magnitude estimates only, it seems safe to conclude that when modeling systems with anomalous weak lensing signals, e.g., the "bullet cluster" of Clowe et al., the "cosmic train wreck" of A520 from Mahdavi et al., and the "dark clusters" of Erben et al., filamentary structures might contribute in a significant and likely complex fashion. On the other hand, our predictions of a (conceptual) difference in the weak lensing signal could, in principle, be used to falsify MOND/TeVeS and its variations.