Combined reconstruction of weak and strong lensing data with WSLAP

We describe a method to estimate the mass distribution of a gravitational lens and the position of the sources from combined strong and weak lensing data. The algorithm combines weak and strong lensing data in a unified way producing a solution which is valid in both the weak and the strong lensing regimes. The method is non-parametric, allowing the mass to be located anywhere in the field of view. We study how the solution depends on the choice of basis used to represent the mass distribution. We find that combining weak and strong lensing information has two major advantages: it alleviates the need for priors and/or regularization schemes for the intrinsic size of the background galaxies (this assumption was needed in previous strong lensing algorithms) and it reduces (although does not remove) biases in the recovered mass in the outer regions where the strong lensing data are less sensitive. The code is implemented into a software package called Weak & Strong Lensing Analysis Package (wslap) which is publicly available at http://darwin.cfa.harvard.edu/SLAP/.