A New Non-parametric Method for Reconstructing Lensed Galaxy Kinematics

Accurately modeling extended emission in strongly lensed sources is essential for studying both the sources themselves and their lens mass distributions. Such modeling is especially challenging (but potentially rewarding) in the context of integral field spectroscopy, which provides valuable information on galaxy properties (especially kinematics) that can reveal the evolutionary states of sources at high redshift. We will present a non-parametric method for modeling such data cubes that better reconstructs the full 3D source intensity distribution but does not place strong priors on source kinematics or morphology. This strategy uses a new regularization framework that is physically motivated and better suited to the 3D nature of the data than previous techniques that model each velocity channel independently. We will show comparisons of source reconstructions with mock observations as well as results from ongoing work applying this approach to archival ALMA observations of molecular line emission in a diverse set of dusty star-forming galaxies.

This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation via grant AST-1716585, and by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory via Student Observing Support award SOSPADA-001.