Gravitational lensing by an ellipsoidal Navarro--Frenk--White dark-matter halo: an analytic solution and its properties

The analysis of gravitational lensing by galaxies and galaxy clusters typically relies on ellipsoidal lens models to describe the deflection of light by the involved dark-matter halos. These models are most often based on the isothermal density profile -- not an optimal description of the halo, but easy to use because it leads to an analytic deflection-angle formula. Dark-matter halos are better described by the Navarro--Frenk--White (NFW) density profile. We set out to study lensing by a general triaxial ellipsoidal NFW halo, with the aim of providing an analytic model that would be more consistent with the current understanding of dark-matter halos. We computed the conversion between the properties of a triaxial ellipsoidal lens model and its elliptical surface-density profile. In the case of the NFW lens model, its angular scale is defined by the projected scale semi-major axis of the halo, while its lensing regime depends on two parameters: the projected eccentricity e and the convergence parameter ₛ. We employed the Bourassa \ critical curves, caustics, and the parameter-space mapping of their geometries; the deformations and orientations of images. The analytically solved ellipsoidal NFW lens model is available for implementation in gravitational lensing software. The techniques introduced here such as the image-plane analysis can prove to be useful for understanding the properties of other lens models as well.