TDCOSMO 2025: Cosmological constraints from strong lensing time delays
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Abstract
We present cosmological constraints from eight strongly lensed quasars (hereafter, the TDCOSMO-2025 sample). Building on previous work, our analysis incorporated new deflector stellar velocity dispersions measured from spectra obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Keck Telescopes, and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), utilizing improved methods. We used integrated JWST stellar kinematics for five lenses, VLT-MUSE for 2, and resolved kinematics from Keck and JWST for RX J1131−1231. We also considered two samples of non-time-delay lenses: 11 from the Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) sample with Keck-KCWI resolved kinematics; and four from the Strong Lenses in the Legacy Survey (SL2S) sample. We improved our analysis of line-of-sight effects, the surface brightness profile of the lens galaxies, and orbital anisotropy, and corrected for projection effects in the dynamics. Our uncertainties are maximally conservative by accounting for the mass-sheet degeneracy in the deflectors’ mass density profiles. The analysis was blinded to prevent experimenter bias. Our primary result is based on the TDCOSMO-2025 sample, in combination with Ω m constraints from the Pantheon+ Type Ia supernovae (SN) dataset. In the flat Λ cold dark matter (CDM), we find H 0 = 71.6 +3.9 −3.3 km s −1 Mpc −1 . The SLACS and SL2S samples are in excellent agreement with the TDCOSMO-2025 sample, improving the precision on H 0 in flat ΛCDM to 4.6%. Using the Dark Energy Survey SN Year-5 dataset (DES-SN5YR) or DESI-DR2 baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) likelihoods instead of Pantheon+ yields very similar results. We also present constraints in the open ΛCDM, w CDM, w 0 w a CDM, and w ϕ CDM cosmologies. The TDCOSMO H 0 inference is robust and consistent across all presented cosmological models, and our cosmological constraints in them agree with those from the BAO and SN.
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JAM models with spherical and cylindrical alignment have been found to generally agree.
“As noted in Birrer et al. [65], JAM models with spherical and cylindrical alignment have been found to generally agree [72, 73], and both Shajib et al. [62], Birrer et al. [65] use the spherical alignment in joint models of lensing and dynamics.”
From Constraint on dark matter self-interaction from combined strong lensing and stellar kinematics in MACS J0138-2155 (2026) · cites this paper as Birrer et al. [65]
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O’Donnell, J. H., Jeltema, T. E., Roberts, M. G., Nightingale, J., Flowers, A., & Aldas, D. (2026) · Physical Review D · doi:10.1103/hfgd-245k · Cited by 5 · see citing works
- Authors
- TDCOSMO Collaboration, Birrer, S., Buckley-Geer, E. J., Cappellari, M., Courbin, F., Dux, F., Fassnacht, C. D., Frieman, J. A., Galan, A., Gilman, D., Huang, X.-Y., Knabel, S., Langeroodi, D., Lin, H., Millon, M., Morishita, T., Motta, V., Mozumdar, P., Paic, E., Shajib, A. J., Sheu, W., Sluse, D., Sonnenfeld, A., Spiniello, C., Stiavelli, M., Suyu, S. H., Tan, C. Y., Treu, T., Van de Vyvere, L., Wang, H., Wells, P., Williams, D. M., & Wong, K. C.
- Affiliations
- Stony Brook University (US)
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ES)
- European Southern Observatory (DE)
- University of California, Davis (US)
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (US)
- Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (DE)
- University of Chicago (US)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (US)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- University of Valparaíso (CL)
- Research Center for the Early Universe (JP)
- Independent University, Bangladesh (BD)
- University of Liège (BE)
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN)
- Space Telescope Science Institute (US)
- STAR Institute, Liège Université, Quartier Agora – Allée du six Août
- Argonne National Laboratory (US)
- ORCID
- Birrer, Simon
- Buckley-Geer, Elizabeth J.
- Cappellari, Michele
- Courbin, Frédéric
- Dux, Frédéric
- Fassnacht, Christopher D.
- Frieman, Joshua A.
- Galan, Aymeric
- Gilman, Daniel
- Huang, Xiang-Yu
- Knabel, Shawn
- Langeroodi, Danial
- Lin, Huan
- Millon, Martin
- Morishita, Takahiro
- Motta, Veronica
- Mozumdar, Pritom
- Paic, Eric
- Shajib, Anowar J.
- Sheu, William
- Sluse, Dominique
- Sonnenfeld, Alessandro
- Spiniello, Chiara
- Stiavelli, Massimo
- Suyu, Sherry H.
- Tan, Chin Yi
- Treu, Tommaso
- Van de Vyvere, Lyne
- Wang, Han
- Wells, Patrick
- Williams, Devon M.
- Wong, Kenneth C.
- Venue
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Publisher
- EDP Sciences
- Published
- 2025-12
- Volume
- 704
- Pages
- A63
- ISSN
- 0004-6361 (ISSN-L)
- 1432-0746
- OpenAlex
- W4415259046
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 46 · 2025: 8
- FWCI
- 21.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Astronomy and Astrophysics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (acceptedVersion)
- ORBi (University of Liège) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Springer Link (Chiba Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection (cc-by)
- Funders
- Max Planck Society
- Department of Physics \& Astronomy, Stony Brook University.
- Swiss National Science Foundation (P500PT_211034, P500PT_203114, P5R5PT_225598)
- HORIZON EUROPE European Research Council (787886)
- National Science Foundation (AST-2407278, NSF-AST-1906976, NSF-AST-1836016)
- Villum Fonden (VIL16599, VIL54489)
- JSPS KAKENHI (JP24H00221, JP20K14511, JP24K07089)
- ANID FONDECYT (1231418)
- Millennium Science Initiative, (AIM23-0001)
- Centro de Astrofisica de Valparaiso (CIDI N21)
- NASA (HST-HF2-51492, JWST-GO-3990, HST-GO-16773, JWST-GO-2974, 80NSSC22K1294, HST-AR-16149)
- Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique - FNRS (4.4503.1)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (EXC-2094, 390783311)
- Moore Foundation (8548)
- NSF (NSF-AST-2407277)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations
- Keywords
- strong gravitational lensing, time-delay cosmography, Hubble constant, strongly lensed quasars, stellar velocity dispersion, mass-sheet degeneracy, line-of-sight effects, orbital anisotropy, SLACS, modified gravity cosmology, dark energy cosmology, cosmological constraints
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