First gravitational lensing mass estimate of a damped Lyman α galaxy at z = 2.2

Abstract

Abstract We present the first lensing total mass estimate of a galaxy, at redshift 2.207, that acts as a gravitational deflector and damped Lyman α absorber on the background QSO SDSS J1135−0010, at redshift 2.888. The remarkably small projected distance, or impact parameter, between the lens and the source has been estimated to be 0.8 ± 0.1 kpc in a recent work. By exploiting the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data base, we establish a likely lensing magnification signal in the photometry of the QSO. This is determined to be 2.2 mag brighter (or eight times more luminous) than the median QSO at comparable redshifts. We describe the total mass distribution of the lens galaxy with a one-component singular isothermal sphere model and contrast the values of the observed and model-predicted magnification factors. For the former, we use conservatively the photometric data of the 95 per cent of the available distant QSO population. We estimate that the values of the lens effective velocity dispersion and two-dimensional total mass, projected within a cylinder with radius equal to the impact parameter, are included between 60 and 170 km s−1 and 2.1 × 109 and 1.8 × 1010 M⊙, respectively. We conclude by remarking that analyses of this kind are crucial to exploring the relation between the luminous and dark-matter components of galaxies in the high-redshift Universe.