Modeling of gravitational lenses through convolutional neural networks
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Keywords

AlexNet
deep learning
strong gravitational lenses
Einstein's radio
image reconstruction
convolutional neural networks

How to Cite

[1]
J. J. Ancona Flores, A. Hernández Almada, and O. Cornejo Pérez, “Modeling of gravitational lenses through convolutional neural networks”, PCT, vol. 9, no. 16, pp. 54–74, Sep. 2026, doi: 10.61820/pct.%x.v9n16.2220.

Abstract

This study addresses the modeling of strong gravitational lenses (SGL) through convolutional neural networks (CNN), aiming to improve the inference of physical parameters associated with the singular isothermal ellipsoid (SIE) model. SGL are essential tools for probing dark matter and dark energy, as well as for obtaining insights into the internal structure of galaxies. However, the increasing volume of astronomical data challenges the efficiency of traditional modeling methods. A synthetic dataset of 76 396 galaxy-galaxy lensing images was 
generated from the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) catalog using the Lenstronomy package. The CNN model was based on the AlexNet architecture, 
with modifications including additional convolutional layers and batch normalization to optimize feature extraction and reduce computational cost. The network predicts four parameters of the SIE Emodel: Einstein radius (θE), axis ratio (f), and ellipticity components (εx, εy). Results demonstrate high predictive performance, with determination coefficients (R²) ranging from 0.95 to 0.97 and average relative errors between 2.6% and 5.1%. Furthermore, reconstructed images achieved a fidelity of 37 dB in PSNR. These findings confirm the effectiveness of lightweight CNN architectures for the automatic modeling of gravitational lenses across massive astronomical datasets.

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