Gravitationally lensed radio sources in the Jodrell Bank-VLA Astrometric Survey

Abstract

We report the final results of the search for gravitationally lensed flat-spectrum radio sources in the 2384-source Jodrell Bank—VLA Astrometric Survey (JVAS). We describe the process of selecting candidate lensed sources from 8.4-GHz VLA snapshot maps. 66 sources were selected as lens candidates and were followed up with multifrequency VLA and/or high-resolution MERLIN 5-GHz observations. To illustrate the candidate elimination process, we discuss examples of sources representative of particular morphologies that have been ruled out by the follow-up observations. There are six gravitational lens systems in the JVAS, five of which are new discoveries. We summarize the properties of all the systems.