How much of the extreme luminosity of IRAS F10214+4724 can be attributed to gravitational lensing

Abstract

\noindent The galaxy IRAS F10214+4724, discovered in a spectroscopic survey of a 0.2 Jy sample by Rowan-Robinson and collaborators in 1991, is significantly more luminous than any other known galaxy. Its bolometric luminosity is comparable to those of the most luminous quasars. Recent obsservations have revealed a candidate foreground group of galaxies, which might gravitationally lens F10214+4724, thus explaining much of its luminosity. High-resolution imaging of F10214+4724 has revealed that most of its near-IR flux comes from a circularly symmetric arc; this also supports the gravitational lens interpretation. In such a scenario, F10214+4724 would be the high-redshift analogue of the ultraluminous IRAS galaxies observed locally. This work presents a simple statistical lensing model to investigate this possibility.

30 pages, available by at ftp://hubble.ifa.hawaii.edu/pub/nat