Focusing Cosmic Telescopes on the Distant Universe

Charles Keeton
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
136 Frelinghuysen Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854-8019

Studying galaxy formation in the young universe is one of the frontiers of observational cosmology. Recent surveys have detected very distant galaxies, but only with large investments of telescope time. Massive clusters of galaxies can bend and focus light, acting as "cosmic telescopes" that magnify faint galaxies and make them easier to detect. I will describe a comprehensive theoretical and observational project to identify outstanding cosmic telescopes and build three-dimensional mass models to account for the light bending so we can infer the intrinsic properties of gravitationally lensed sources.