2018MNRAS.477L..70W

We present the discovery of three quasar lenses in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, selected using two novel photometry-based selection techniques. The J0941+0518 system, with two point sources separated by 5.46 arcsec on either side of a galaxy, has source and lens redshifts 1.54 and 0.343. Images of J2257+2349 show two point sources separated by 1.67 arcsec on either side of an E/S0 galaxy. The extracted spectra show two images of the same quasar at z_s = 2.10. SDSS J1640+1045 has two quasar spectra at z_s = 1.70 and fits to the SDSS and Pan-STARRS images confirm the presence of a galaxy between the two point sources. We observed 56 photometrically selected lens candidates in this follow-up campaign, confirming three new lenses, re-discovering one known lens, and ruling out 36 candidates, with 16 still inconclusive. This initial campaign demonstrates the power of purely photometric selection techniques in finding lensed quasars.