Discovering New Strong Gravitational Lenses in the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys
Xiaosheng Huang, Christopher Storfer, Andi Gu, Vikram Ravi, Andrew Pilon, William Sheu, R. Venguswamy, S. Banka, Arjun Dey, Martin Landriau, Dustin Lang, Aaron Meisner, John Moustakas, Adam D. Myers, R. Sajith, Edward F. Schlafly, David J. Schlegel
Abstract
Abstract We have conducted a search for new strong gravitational lensing systems in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Legacy Imaging Surveys’ Data Release 8. We use deep residual neural networks, building on previous work presented by Huang et al. These surveys together cover approximately one-third of the sky visible from the Northern Hemisphere, reaching a z -band AB magnitude of ∼22.5. We compile a training sample that consists of known lensing systems as well as non-lenses in the Legacy Surveys and the Dark Energy Survey. After applying our trained neural networks to the survey data, we visually inspect and rank images with probabilities above a threshold. Here we present 1210 new strong lens candidates.