The statistical era of strong gravitational lensing

宇宙的膨胀越来越快，我们不知道为什么。为了解开这个谜团，我用一种叫做引力透镜的效应来回答三个问题：宇宙目前膨胀的速度有多快？重力如何在天文距离尺度上起作用？宇宙能量预算的主要组成部分是什么？当两个星系在天空中排成1/3600度的直线时，就会发生引力透镜效应。前景星系的质量扭曲了时空，并在经过背景星系时使光线偏转。引力透镜是看到背景星系的多个图像的地方。图像分离对前景星系的质量、引力的作用方式和宇宙的膨胀都很敏感。我用引力透镜的小样本对我的三个问题给出了初步的答案，我有来自世界上最大的望远镜的新数据来改进这些答案。我的工作的主要限制是没有足够的镜头。幸运的是，一个巨大的新望远镜即将问世。它将发现比目前已知的多100倍的透镜。在这次调查中，我领导了强有力的透镜工作。寻找镜头将是一个挑战，因为每个镜头都有一百万个非镜头。我正在研究使用计算机视觉算法的新发现方法，以及志愿者公民科学家。在ERF结束时，我将有足够的镜头来回答我的三个问题，并理解宇宙的加速膨胀。

The expansion of the Universe is getting faster and we don't know why. To solve this mystery I am using an effect called gravitational lensing to answer three questions: How fast is the Universe currently expanding? How does gravity work over astronomical distance scales? What is the dominant component of the Universe's energy budget?Gravitational lensing occurs when two galaxies are aligned on the sky to about 1/3600 of a degree. The mass of the foreground galaxy warps spacetime and deflects the light from the background galaxy as it passes. A gravitational lens is where multiple images of the background galaxy are seen. The image separation is sensitive to the mass of the foreground galaxy, the way gravity works and the expansion of the Universe. I have used small samples of gravitational lenses to give preliminary answers to my three questions, and I have new data from the world's biggest telescopes to improve these answers. The main limitation of my work is that there aren't enough lenses. Fortunately there is a giant new telescope forthcoming. It will find 100 times more lenses than are currently known. I lead the strong lensing efforts in this survey. Finding the lenses will be challenging as there are a million non-lenses for every lens. I am working on new discovery methods using computer vision algorithms, and volunteer citizen scientists. At the end of the ERF I will have enough lenses to answer my three questions and understand the accelerated expansion of the Universe.