Skip to content
Merged
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
Generated with the built-in image_gen tool. Preview only.

Use case: scientific-educational. Create a visually striking wide landscape editorial astronomy illustration for a software tutorial about detecting invisible dark matter subhalos through small distortions of strong gravitational lens arcs. Deep navy nearly black background, richly detailed luminous cyan partial Einstein ring around a warm amber elliptical foreground galaxy, sophisticated restrained typography, generous negative space. Main left two thirds: beautiful lens scene, mostly smooth cyan arcs but a small localized deflection near upper right arc. A thin dashed amber circular marker near that local arc identifies an inferred dark perturber, with empty dark interior, absolutely no glowing body or visible dark-matter blob. Thin connector from marked arc region to two small comparison panels at right showing the SAME arc segment at SAME scale: upper panel smoothly curved arc labelled 'Smooth lens model'; lower panel same arc and texture with a small local bending distortion labelled 'With a subhalo'. Dashed marker for invisible perturber only in lower panel. Difference should be noticeable but modest, not a giant hole or sharp broken lightning kink. Main large heading 'Finding invisible dark matter'. Main scene small label 'Lensed galaxy'. Marker label 'Inferred subhalo'. Bottom legible small caption 'Conceptual illustration · distortion exaggerated for clarity'. Show astrophysical beauty first, explanation second. No graphs, no equations, no evidence scores, no invented measurements, no telescope logo. This is an illustrative lensing scenario, not a real observation. All text exactly as supplied, clean spelling.

Correction pass: replace 'Lensed galaxy' with 'Foreground lens' where the leader points at the central orange galaxy. Preserve all other elements.
32 changes: 21 additions & 11 deletions docs/overview/overview_3_features.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -321,20 +321,30 @@ Checkout `autolens_workspace/*/guides/modeling/slam_start_here.py` to get starte

## Dark Matter Subhalos

The dark matter model predicts that galaxies are surrounded by many low-mass dark matter subhalos, which host no
stars and are therefore invisible to ordinary observations. Strong lensing is one of the only probes which can
detect them, via the small perturbations they imprint on a lensed source's light, testing the nature of
dark matter (e.g. cold, warm or self-interacting).
Small dark matter halos can perturb the shapes of lensed arcs even when they contain too little starlight to
be seen directly. **PyAutoLens** searches for these otherwise invisible structures by fitting lens models with
and without an additional halo, comparing their Bayesian evidence and inferring the candidate's position and mass
under the adopted halo model.

**PyAutoLens** provides a complete dark matter subhalo analysis: lens models with and without a subhalo are fitted
and compared via their Bayesian evidence, quantifying whether the data favors the subhalo's presence. Sensitivity
mapping then simulates subhalos of different masses at different locations in the data, quantifying which
subhalos a given dataset could actually detect.
Use this feature to search for candidate subhalos, investigate arc anomalies, and build detection results for
population studies of dark matter. Pair it with **sensitivity mapping**: simulated halos of different masses and
positions establish what a dataset could detect, making non-detections scientifically informative too.

The following paper performs this analysis on a sample of HST strong lenses: <https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.10566>
![An invisible subhalo perturbs a lensed arc](images/overview_3/subhalo_detection_illustration.png)

Checkout `autolens_workspace/*/imaging/features/advanced/subhalo/detect` for subhalo detection
and `autolens_workspace/*/imaging/features/advanced/subhalo/sensitivity` for sensitivity mapping.
*Conceptual illustration, not observational data. The distortion is exaggerated for clarity; the dashed marker
represents an inferred halo position, not light emitted by dark matter.*

An evidence increase is conditional on the lens and source models being compared. Candidates require checks of
the main lens mass distribution, source reconstruction and observational systematics. A halo along the line of
sight can also perturb an arc; this example models the perturber at the lens redshift.

For a scientific application and the importance of testing lens-model flexibility, see
[Nightingale et al., Scanning For Dark Matter Subhalos in Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of 54 Strong Lenses](https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.10566).

Start with the [subhalo detection introduction](https://github.com/PyAutoLabs/autolens_workspace/blob/main/notebooks/imaging/features/advanced/subhalo/detect/start_here.ipynb)
for the SLaM workflow, grid search and evidence interpretation, then explore
[sensitivity mapping](https://github.com/PyAutoLabs/autolens_workspace/blob/main/notebooks/imaging/features/advanced/subhalo/sensitivity/start_here.ipynb).

## Graphical Models

Expand Down
Loading