2015MNRAS.453.3068B

We present a detailed analysis of an individual case of gravitational lensing of a z ∼ 8 Lyman-break galaxy (LBG) in a blank field, identified in Hubble Space Telescope imaging obtained as part of the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies survey. To investigate the close proximity of the bright (mAB = 25.8) Y098-dropout to a small group of foreground galaxies, we obtained deep spectroscopy of the dropout and two foreground galaxies using VLT/X-Shooter. We detect H α, H β, [O iii] and [O ii] emission in the brightest two foreground galaxies (unresolved at the natural seeing of 0.8 arcsec), placing the pair at z = 1.327. We can rule out emission lines contributing all of the observed broad-band flux in H160 band at 70σ, allowing us to exclude the z ∼ 8 candidate as a low-redshift interloper with broad-band photometry dominated by strong emission lines. The foreground galaxy pair lies at the peak of the luminosity, redshift and separation distributions for deflectors of strongly lensed z ∼ 8 objects, and we make a marginal detection of a demagnified secondary image in the deepest (J125) filter. We show that the configuration can be accurately modelled by a singular isothermal ellipsoidal deflector and a Sérsic source magnified by a factor of µ = 4.3±0.2. The reconstructed source in the best-fitting model is consistent with luminosities and morphologies of z ∼ 8 LBGs in the literature. The lens model yields a group mass of 9.62±0.31x10¹¹M_☉ and a stellar mass-to-light ratio for the brightest deflector galaxy of M_*/L_B=2.3^+0.8_-0.6  M_☉/L_☉ within its effective radius. The foreground galaxies' redshifts would make this one of the few strong lensing deflectors discovered at z > 1. Deeper imaging would allow for confirmation of the existence of the secondary image and elongation in the primary image, verifying multiple imaging and producing more robust estimations of the image magnifications.