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MULTIPOLE FORMULAE FOR GRAVITATIONAL LENSING SHEAR AND FLEXION

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Gary M. Bernstein1 and Reiko Nakajima1,2

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The gravitational lensing equations for convergence, potential, shear, and flexion are simple in polar coordinates and separate under a multipole expansion once the shear and flexion spinors are rotated into a "tangential" basis. We use this to investigate whether the useful monopole aperture-mass shear formulae generalize to all multipoles and to flexions. We re-derive the result of Schneider and Bartelmann that the shear multipole m at radius R is completely determined by the mass multipole at R, plus specific moments Q (m) in and Q (m) out of the mass multipoles internal and external, respectively, to R. The m ≥ 0 multipoles are independent of Q out. But in contrast to the monopole, the m < 0 multipoles are independent of Q in. These internal and external mass moments can be determined by shear (and/or flexion) data on the complementary portion of the plane, which has practical implications for lens modeling. We find that the ease of E/B separation in the monopole aperture moments does not generalize to m ≠ 0: the internal monopole moment is the only nonlocal E/B discriminant available from lensing observations. We have also not found practical local E/B discriminants beyond the monopole, though they could exist. We show also that the use of weak-lensing data to constrain a constant shear term near a strong-lensing system is impractical without strong prior constraints on the neighboring mass distribution.


Keywords

gravitational lensing; methods: analytical


Dates

Issue 2 (2009 March 10)

Received 2008 July 10, accepted for publication 2008 December 8

Published 2009 March 9



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