The Discrepancy between Einstein Mass and Dynamical Mass for SIS and Power-law Mass Models

Abstract

Abstract We investigate the discrepancy between the two-dimensional projected lensing mass and the dynamical mass for an ensemble of 97 strong gravitational lensing systems discovered by the Sloan Lens ACS Survey, the BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey (BELLS), and the BELLS for GALaxy-Lyα EmitteR sYstems Survey. We fit the lensing data to obtain the Einstein mass and use the velocity dispersion of the lensing galaxies provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to get the projected dynamical mass within the Einstein radius by assuming the power-law mass approximation. The discrepancy is found to be obvious and quantified by Bayesian analysis. For the singular isothermal sphere mass model, we obtain that the Einstein mass is 20.7% more than the dynamical mass, and the discrepancy increases with the redshift of the lensing galaxies. For the more general power-law mass model, the discrepancy still exists within a 1σ credible region. We suspect the main reason for this discrepancy is mass contamination, including all invisible masses along the line of sight. In addition, the measurement errors and the approximation of the mass models could also contribute to the discrepancy.