TDCOSMO

VI. Distance measurements in time-delay cosmography under the mass-sheet transformation

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
e-mail: gcfchen@astro.ucla.edu
² Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 1, 85740 Garching, Germany
³ Physik-Department, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Straße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴ Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), 11F of ASMAB, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
⁵ Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583, Japan
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

Received: 12 November 2020
Accepted: 26 March 2021

Abstract

Time-delay cosmography with gravitationally lensed quasars plays an important role in anchoring the absolute distance scale and hence measuring the Hubble constant, H₀, independent of traditional distance ladder methodology. A current potential limitation of time-delay distance measurements is the mass-sheet transformation (MST), which leaves the lensed imaging unchanged but changes the distance measurements and the derived value of H₀. In this work we show that the standard method of addressing the MST in time-delay cosmography, through a combination of high-resolution imaging and the measurement of the stellar velocity dispersion of the lensing galaxy, depends on the assumption that the ratio, D_s/D_ds, of angular diameter distances to the background quasar and between the lensing galaxy and the quasar can be constrained. This is typically achieved through the assumption of a particular cosmological model. Previous work (TDCOSMO IV) addressed the mass-sheet degeneracy and derived H₀ under the assumption of the ΛCDM model. In this paper we show that the mass-sheet degeneracy can be broken without relying on a specific cosmological model by combining lensing with relative distance indicators such as supernovae Type Ia and baryon acoustic oscillations, which constrain the shape of the expansion history and hence D_s/D_ds. With this approach, we demonstrate that the mass-sheet degeneracy can be constrained in a cosmological model-independent way. Hence model-independent distance measurements in time-delay cosmography under MSTs can be obtained.