Combined reconstruction of weak and strong lensing data with WSLAP

Abstract

We describe a method to estimate the mass distribution of a gravitational lens and the position of the sources from combined strong and weak lensing data. The algorithm combines weak and strong lensing data in a unified way producing a solution which is valid in both the weak and strong lensing regimes. We study how the result depends on the relative weighting of the weak and strong lensing data and on choice of basis to represent the mass distribution. We find that combining weak and strong lensing information has two major advantages: it eliminates the need for priors and/or regularization schemes for the intrinsic size of the background galaxies (this assumption was needed in previous strong lensing algorithms) and it corrects for biases in the recovered mass in the outer regions where the strong lensing data is less sensitive. The code is implemented into a software package called WSLAP (Weak & Strong Lensing Analysis Package) which is publicly available at this http URL