Lensed quasar search via time variability with the HSC transient survey

¹ Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 85741 Garching, Germany
e-mail: dchao@mpa-garching.mpg.de
² Physik-Department, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Straße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
³ Institute of Physics, Laboratory of Astrophysics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Observatoire de Sauverny, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland
⁴ Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, 11F of ASMAB, No.1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
⁵ Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583, Japan
⁶ The Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Post bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411007, India
⁷ Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
⁸ Research Center for the Early Universe, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
⁹ Institute of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-0015, Japan
¹⁰ Department of Physics, Kindai University, 3-4-1 Kowakae, Higashi-Osaka, Osaka 577-8502, Japan
¹¹ Astronomy Study Program and Bosscha Observatory, FMIPA, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Jl. Ganesha 10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia

Received: 28 September 2019
Accepted: 30 April 2020

Abstract

Gravitationally lensed quasars are useful for studying astrophysics and cosmology, and enlarging the sample size of lensed quasars is important for multiple studies. In this work, we develop a lens search algorithm for four-image (quad) lensed quasars based on their time variability. In the development of the lens search algorithm, we constructed a pipeline simulating multi-epoch images of lensed quasars in cadenced surveys, accounting for quasar variabilities, quasar hosts, lens galaxies, and the point spread function variation. Applying the simulation pipeline to the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) transient survey, an ongoing cadenced survey, we generated HSC-like difference images of the mock lensed quasars from the lens catalog of Oguri & Marshall (2010, MNRAS, 405, 2579). With the difference images of the mock lensed quasars and the variable objects from the HSC transient survey, we developed a lens search algorithm that picks out variable objects as lensed quasar candidates based on their spatial extent in the difference images. We tested the performance of our lens search algorithm on a sample combining the mock lensed quasars and variable objects from the HSC transient survey. Using difference images from multiple epochs, our lens search algorithm achieves a high true-positive rate (TPR) of 90.1% and a low false-positive rate (FPR) of 2.3% for the bright quads (the third brightest image brightness m_3rd <  22.0 mag) with wide separation (the largest separation among the multiple image pairs θ_LP >  1.5″). With a preselection of the number of blobs in the difference image, we obtain a TPR of 97.6% and a FPR of 2.6% for the bright quads with wide separation. Even when difference images are only available in one single epoch, our lens search algorithm can still detect the bright quads with wide separation at high TPR of 97.6% and low FPR of 2.4% in the optimal seeing scenario, and at TPR of ∼94% and FPR of ∼5% in typical scenarios. Therefore, our lens search algorithm is promising and is applicable to ongoing and upcoming cadenced surveys, particularly the HSC transient survey and the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time, for finding new lensed quasar systems.