The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will find more strong gravitational lensing events than any survey preceding it, and will monitor them all at a cadence of a few days to a few weeks. Concurrent space-based optical or perhaps ground-based surveys may provide higher resolution imaging: the biggest advances in strong lensing science made with LSST will be in those areas that benefit most from the large volume, and the high accuracy multi-filter time series.
Among its many applications, strong lensing can be used to trace total mass distributions of galaxies, groups and clusters; test detailed predictions of CDM on sub-galaxy scales; constrain cosmological parameters; study high-redshift transients and host galaxies; probe accretion disk structure with microlensing; and place constraints on stellar mass functions. The SLSC considers all aspects of strong lensing science and the best means of extracting it from LSST data. We work closely with the DESC Strong Lensing Topical Team (DESC-SLTT) with a large overlap in membership. Given the varied applications of strong gravitational lensing our science areas of interest also overlap with a number of other LSST science collaborations and working groups including Dark Energy, Galaxies, Clusters, AGN, and Transients.
The current Co-Chairs are:
Simon Birrer (simon.birrer at stonybrook.edu) Stonybrook University, USA
Anupreeta More (anupreeta at iucaa.in) IUCAA, India
The SLSC collaboration was originally set-up and run by Phil Marshall (pjm at slac.stanford.edu). Phil, Chuck Keeton (keeton at physics.rutgers.edu), Aprajita Verma (aprajita.verma at physics.ox.ac.uk) , Timo Anguita (tanguita at gmail.com) and Graham Smith (gps at star.sr.bham.ac.uk) are previous co-chairs and form an advisory group for the SLSC along with Will Clarkson the Rubin Science Collaborations Coordinator.
For information on eligibility and how to apply to join the SLSC please go to the 'Apply' link on the above right menu or click here.
Members of the Strong Lensing Science Collaboration (SLSC) are expected to adhere to the Code of Conduct of the Collaboration. If a member experiences any behavior inconsistent with this Code of Conduct, we encourage the member to reach out to the Collaboration’s Ethics Panel by sending an email to slsc_ethics@googlegroup.com describing the situation.
The current panel consists of three rotating SLSC members -
Tansu Daylan
Anupreeta More
Dan Ryczanoswki
We currently meet once a month (fourth Tuesday at 4pm UTC) in a joint telecon with the DESC Strong Lensing Topical Team, and have face-to-face sessions in the DESC meetings/workshops.
We operate a listserv Collaboration mailing list which you will be automatically added to when becoming a member of the SLSC. (Note it is not possible to join this list without becoming a member of the SLSC first.)
Members can be reached via email to lsst-stronglens at lists.lsst.org
You can also follow the designated Slack channel on lsstc.slack.com #strong-lensing