Resolving star-forming clumps in a z similar to 2 lensed galaxy: a pixelated Bayesian approach

Abstract

We present a pixelized source reconstruction method applied on integral field spectroscopic observations of gravitationally lensed galaxies. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method in a case study on the clumpy morphology of a z similar to 2 lensed galaxy behind a group-scale lens. We use a Bayesian forward source modelling approach to reconstruct the surface brightness distribution of the source galaxy on a uniformly pixelized grid while accounting for the image point spread function. The pixelated approach is sensitive to clump sizes down to 100 pc and resolves smaller clump sizes with an improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio by almost a factor of 10 compared with more traditional ray-tracing approaches. Show more