Estimating cosmological parameters from future gravitational lens
  surveys
  Upcoming ground and space based observatories such as the DES, the LSST, the
JDEM concepts and the SKA, promise to dramatically increase the size of strong
gravitational lens samples. A significant fraction of the systems are expected
to be time delay lenses. Many of the existing lensing degeneracies become less
of an issue with large samples since the distributions of a number of
parameters are predictable, and can be incorporated into an analysis, thus
helping to lessen the degeneracy. Assuming a mean galaxy density profile that
does not evolve with redshift, a Lambda-CDM cosmology, and Gaussian
distributions for bulk parameters describing the lens and source populations,
we generate synthetic lens catalogues and examine the relationship between
constraints on the Omega_m - Omega_Lambda plane and H_0 with increasing lens
sample size. We find that, with sample sizes of ~400 time delay lenses, useful
constraints can be obtained for Omega_m and Omega_Lambda with approximately
similar levels of precision as from the best of other methods. In addition,
sample sizes of ~100 time delay systems yield estimates of H_0 with errors of
only a couple of percent, exceeding the level of precision from current best
estimates such as the HST Key Project. We note that insufficient prior
knowledge of the lens samples employed in the analysis, via under or
overestimates in the mean values of the sample distributions, results in
broadening of constraints. This highlights the need for sound prior knowledge
of the sample before useful cosmological constraints can be obtained from large
time delay samples (abridged).
