Compilation of 122 strong gravitational lenses

We study the redshift distribution of two samples of early-type gravitational lenses, extracted from a larger collection of 122 systems, to constrain the cosmological constant in the {Lambda}CDM model and the parameters of a set of alternative dark energy models (XCDM, Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati, and Ricci dark energy models), in a spatially flat universe. The likelihood is maximized for {Omega}_{Lambda}_=0.70+/-0.09 when considering the sample excluding the Sloan Lens ACS systems (known to be biased toward large image-separation lenses) and no-evolution, and {Omega}_{Lambda}_=0.81+/-0.05 when limiting to gravitational lenses with image separation {Delta}{theta}>2" and no-evolution.

In both cases, results accounting for galaxy evolution are consistent within 1{sigma}. The present test supports the accelerated expansion, by excluding the null hypothesis (i.e., {Omega}_{Lambda}_=0) at more than 4{sigma}, regardless of the chosen sample and assumptions on the galaxy evolution. A comparison between competitive world models is performed by means of the Bayesian information criterion.