MAGNIFICATION AS A PROBE OF DARK MATTER HALOS AT HIGH REDSHIFTS

We propose a new approach for measuring the mass profile of dark matter halos by stacking the lensing magnification of distant background galaxies behind groups and clusters of galaxies. The main advantage of lensing magnification is that, unlike lensing shear, it relies on accurate photometric redshifts only and not on galaxy shapes, thus enabling the study of the dark matter distribution with unresolved source galaxies. We present a feasibility study, using a real population of z ≥ 2.5 Lyman break galaxies as source galaxies, and where, similar to galaxy-galaxy lensing, foreground lenses are stacked in order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. We find that there is an interesting new observational window for gravitational lensing as a probe of dark matter halos at high redshift, which does not require a measurement of galaxy shapes.