Abstract Astrometric perturbations of lensed arcs behind galaxy clusters have been recently suggested as promising probes of small-scale (≲ 109M⊙) dark matter substructure. Populations of cold dark matter (CDM) subhalos, predicted in hierarchical structure formation theory, can break the symmetry of arcs near the critical curve, leading to positional shifts in the observed images. We present a novel statistical method to constrain the average subhalo mass fraction (fsub) in clusters that takes advantage of this induced positional asymmetry. Focusing on CDM, we extend a recent semi-analytic model of subhalo tidal evolution to accurately simulate realistic subhalos within a cluster-scale host. We simulate the asymmetry of lensed arcs from these subhalo populations using Approximate Bayesian Computation. Using mock data, we demonstrate that our method can reliably recover the simulated fsub to within 68% CI in 73% of cases, regardless of the lens model, astrometric precision, and image morphology. We show that the constraining power of our method is optimized for larger samples of well observed arcs, ideal for recent JWST observations of cluster lenses. As a preliminary test, we apply our method to the MACSJ0416 Warhol arc and AS1063 System 1. For Warhol we constrain the upper limit on f ₒₔ₁ -3. 48^+1. 00-₀. ₉₁, while for AS1063 System 1 we constrain f ₒₔ₁ = -2. 44^+0. 61-₀. ₈₆ (both at 68% CI), consistent with CDM predictions. We elaborate on our method’s limitations and its future potential to place stringent constraints on dark matter properties in cluster environments.
Perera et al. (2026) studied this question.