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Abstract
Strong gravitational lensing occurs when light from a distant source is deflected by a massive object along its line of sight to an observer, causing the source image to appear multiply imaged or distorted to the observer. The morphology of strong gravitational lensing systems depends not only on the projected mass profile of the intervening lens object but also on a combination of geometric distances between the observer, lens, and source, making them useful probes of dark matter and dark energy. Many strong lenses have been found through previous searches in wide-field surveys, and the advent of future large-scale cosmic surveys will usher in a new epoch of strong lensing discovery. In this thesis, I will present several related works involving strong gravitational lenses discovered or imaged in astronomical surveys. First, I present the spectroscopic and photometric characterization of the environment around two time-delay gravitational lenses discovered in Dark Energy Survey data. Then, I present the mass and light properties of Four Early-type galaxy-scale strong lenses discovered in the Dark Energy Survey. Finally, I present the application of two different novel deep learning techniques to strong lensing analysis in simulated wide-field survey imaging data.
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