"A New Independent Limit on the Cosmological Constant/Dark Energy from the Relativistic Bending of Light by Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies", by Mustapha Ishak, Wolfgang Rindler, Jason Dossett, Jacob Moldenhauer, Chris Allison (The University of Texas at Dallas); arXiv preprint
here.
Yes, that's Wolfgang Rindler, he of the Rindler metric!
The abstract is somewhat dry, but raises a very interesting possibility:
Quote:
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We derive new limits on the value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$, based on the Einstein bending of light by systems where the lens is a distant galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. We use an amended lens equation in which the contribution of $\Lambda$ to the Einstein deflection angle is taken into account and use observations of Einstein radii around several lens systems. Interestingly, we find that the contribution of the cosmological constant to the bending angle can be as big as 27% of the magnitude of the first-order term in the deflection angle and a few orders of magnitude larger than the second-order term. We use these observations of bending-angles to derive limits on the value of $\Lambda$ and find them to be competitive with the value determined from cosmology.
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Gravitational lensing observations as a possible way to independently estimate Λ? Very interesting indeed.