Scientific rationale
Strong gravitational lensing is entering a new era. The coming decade will witness a revolution in both the number and diversity of gravitational lenses, driven by transformational facilities such as Euclid, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (LSST), the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the future time-domain and multi-messenger observatories. These facilities will discover hundreds of thousands of new lenses while opening the door to entirely new classes of lensed sources and scientific applications.
Beyond the traditional study of lensed galaxies and quasars, strong lensing is rapidly expanding into the time domain, with lensed transients, and, eventually, gravitational-wave events providing new opportunities to probe cosmology, dark matter, and fundamental physics. At the same time, the increasingly high precision is enabling entirely new science, from resolving individual stars at cosmological distances to directly measuring the small scale distribution of dark matter, studying galaxy evolution with extreme magnification, and testing gravity on cosmic scales.
The field is also enriched by increasingly sophisticated lens modelling and statistical techniques, which are transforming how physical information can be extracted from strong lenses found in large surveys.
This conference aims at bringing together the strong lensing community to discuss the opportunities and challenges that will define strong gravitational lensing in the next decade. By focusing on new surveys, new sources, new lenses, and new science, the meeting aims to foster interactions to actively prepare for the next generation of gravitational lensing discoveries.
Scientific organising committee
Ana Acebron (Universidad de Cantabria)
Ran Li (NAOC)
Shude Mao (Westlake University)
Anupreeta More (IUCAA)
Nicola Napolitano (University of Naples Federico II)
Masamune Oguri (Chiba University)
Cristiana Spingola (INAF-IRA)
Alessandro Sonnenfeld (SJTU, chair)
Sherry Suyu (TUM-MPA)
Tommaso Treu (UCLA)
Hao Zhou (SJTU)