Detailed mass map of CL 0024+1654 from strong lensing

We construct a high-resolution mass map of the z = 0.39 cluster 0024 + 1654, based on a parametric inversion of the associated gravitational lens. The lens creates eight well-resolved subimages of a background galaxy, seen in deep imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope.(1) Excluding mass concentrations centered on visible galaxies, more than 98% of the remaining mass is represented by a smooth concentration of dark matter centered near the brightest cluster galaxies, with a 35 h(-1) kpc soft core. The asymmetry in the mass distribution is less than 3% inside 107 h(-1) kpc radius. The dark matter distribution we observe in CL 0024 is far more smooth, symmetric, and nonsingular than in typical simulated clusters in either Omega = 1 or Omega = 0.3 cold dark matter cosmologies. Integrated to a 107 h(-1) kpc radius, the rest-frame mass-to-light ratio is M/L-v = 276 +/- 40 h (M/L-v)..