Non-halo structures and their effects on gravitationally lensed galaxies

¹ Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg (ObAS), UMR 7550, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
² ENS Paris-Saclay, 4 Av. des Sciences, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
³ Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 1, D-85748 Garching bei München, Germany
⁴ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi”, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/2, I-40129 Bologna, Italy
⁵ INAF-Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via Piero Gobetti 93/3, I-40129 Bologna, Italy
⁶ INFN-Sezione di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 6/2, I-40127 Bologna, Italy
⁷ Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal, 4, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa, Spain
⁸ Institute for Astronomy, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstraße 17, Vienna 1180, Austria

^⋆ Corresponding author: baptiste.jego@astro.unistra.fr

Received: 28 January 2025
Accepted: 31 March 2025

Abstract

While the lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model is very successful on large scales, its validity on smaller scales remains uncertain. Recent works suggest that non-halo dark matter structures, such as filaments and walls, could significantly influence gravitational lensing and that the importance of these effects depends on the dark matter model. Specifically, in warm dark matter (WDM) scenarios, fewer low-mass objects form and thus their mass is redistributed into the cosmic web. We investigated these effects on galaxy-galaxy lensing using fragmentation-free WDM simulations with particle masses of m_χ = 1 keV and m_χ = 3 keV. Although these cosmological scenarios have been observationally excluded in the past, the fraction of mass falling outside of halos grows with the thermal velocity of the dark matter particles, which allows for the search for first-order effects. We created mock datasets based on gravitationally lensed systems from the BELLS-Gallery, incorporating non-halo contributions from these simulations to study their impact in comparison to mocks where the lens has a smooth mass distribution. Using Bayesian modelling, we found that perturbations from WDM non-halo structures produce an effect on the inferred parameters of the main lens and shift the reconstructed source position. However, these variations are subtle and are effectively absorbed by standard elliptical power-law lens models, making it challenging to distinguish them from intrinsic lensing features. Most importantly, non-halo perturbations do not appear as a strong external shear term, which is commonly used in gravitational lensing analyses to represent large-scale perturbations. Our results demonstrate that while non-halo structures can affect the lensing analysis, the overall impact remains indistinguishable from variations of the main lens in colder WDM and CDM scenarios, where non-halo contributions are smaller.