Non-halo structures and their effects on gravitational lensing

Anomalies in the flux ratios of the images of quadruply-lensed quasars have been used to constrain the nature of dark matter. Assuming these lensing perturbations are caused by dark matter haloes, it is currently possible to constrain the mass of a hypothetical Warm Dark Matter (WDM) particle to be m(chi) > 5.2 keV. However, the assumption that perturbations are only caused by DM haloes might not be correct as other structures, such as filaments and pancakes, exist and make up a significant fraction of the mass in the Universe, ranging between 5 per cent and 50 per cent depending on the dark matter model. Using novel fragmentation-free simulations of 1 and 3 keV WDM cosmologies we study these `non-halo' structures and estimate their impact on flux-ratio observations. We find that these structures display sharp density gradients with short correlation lengths, and can contribute more to the lensing signal than all haloes up to the half-mode mass combined, thus reducing the differences expected among WDM models. We estimate that non-halo structures can be the dominant cause of line-of-sight flux-ratio anomalies in very warm, but already excluded, m(x) similar to 1 keV scenarios. For colder cases m(x) greater than or similar to 3 keV, we estimate that non-haloes can contribute about 5 - 10 per cent of the total flux-ratio signal.

Automated summary

Anomalies in the flux ratios of quadruply-lensed quasars have been used to constrain the nature of dark matter. However, other structures besides dark matter haloes, such as filaments and pancakes, may also contribute significantly to the lensing signal. The study finds that these non-halo structures can have a greater impact on the flux-ratio observations than all haloes combined, reducing the differences expected among Warm Dark Matter models.