2023MNRAS.525.5423L

All lens modelling methods, simply parametrized, hybrid, and free-form, use assumptions to reconstruct galaxy clusters with multiply imaged sources, though the nature of these assumptions (priors) can differ considerably between methods. This raises an important question in strong lens modelling: how much information about the mass model comes from the lensed images themselves, and how much is a consequence of model priors. One way to assess the relative contributions of the lensing data versus model priors is to estimate global lens properties through images alone, without any prior assumptions about the mass distribution. This is our approach. We use 200 mock cluster lenses, half of which have substructures, which vary from clumpy and compact to smooth and extended, a simulated cluster Ares, and real clusters Abell 1689 and RX J1347.5-1145 to show that the centre, ellipticity, and position angle can be estimated quite well, and nearly perfectly for weakly substructured clusters, implying that the recovery of these properties is largely driven by the images, not priors. However, the correlation between the true and image-estimated amount of substructure has a lot of scatter, suggesting that multiple images do not uniquely constrain substructure. Therefore, in general, lens model priors have a stronger effect on smaller scales. Our analysis partly explains why reconstructions using different methodologies can produce qualitatively different mass maps on substructure scales. Our analysis is not meant to aide or replace lens inversion methods, but only to investigate what cluster properties are constrained with multiple images.