Lensing optical depths for substructure and isolated dark matter halos

Multiply imaged quasar lenses can be used to constrain the substructure mass fraction in galaxy-sized dark matter halos via anomalous flux ratios in lensed images. The flux ratios, however, can be affected both by the substructure in the lens halo and by isolated small-mass halos along the entire line of sight to the lensed source. While lensing by dark matter clumps near the lens galaxy is more efficient than elsewhere, the cumulative effect of all objects along the line of sight could be significant. Here we estimate the potential contribution of isolated clumps to the substructure lensing signal using a simple model motivated by cosmological simulations. We find that the contribution of isolated clumps to the total lensing optical depth ranges from a few percent to tens of percent, depending on assumptions and the particular configuration of the lens. Therefore, although the contribution of isolated clumps to the lensing signal is not dominant, it should not be neglected in detailed analyses of substructure lensing. For the currently favored LambdaCDM model, the total calculated optical depth for lensing is high, tau similar to 0.2-20, and could, therefore, naturally explain the high frequency of anomalous flux ratios in observed lenses. The prediction, however, is highly sensitive to the spatial distribution of substructure halos in the innermost regions of the lens halo, which is still very uncertain. Therefore, constraints on the properties of the substructure population or accurate cosmological constraints, such as the mass of the warm dark matter particle, are difficult-if not impossible-to derive at this point.