9,364 research outputs found
Sources of contamination to weak lensing tomography: redshift-dependent shear measurement bias
The current methods available to estimate gravitational shear from
astronomical images of galaxies introduce systematic errors which can affect
the accuracy of weak lensing cosmological constraints. We study the impact of
KSB shape measurement bias on the cosmological interpretation of tomographic
two-point weak lensing shear statistics.
We use a set of realistic image simulations produced by the STEP
collaboration to derive shape measurement bias as a function of redshift. We
define biased two-point weak lensing statistics and perform a likelihood
analysis for two fiducial surveys. We present a derivation of the covariance
matrix for tomography in real space and a fitting formula to calibrate it for
non-Gaussianity.
We find the biased aperture mass dispersion is reduced by ~20% at redshift
~1, and has a shallower scaling with redshift. This effect, if ignored in data
analyses, biases sigma_8 and w_0 estimates by a few percent. The power of
tomography is significantly reduced when marginalising over a range of
realistic shape measurement biases. For a CFHTLS-Wide-like survey, [Omega_m,
sigma_8] confidence regions are degraded by a factor of 2, whereas for a
KIDS-like survey the factor is 3.5. Our results are strictly valid only for KSB
methods but they demonstrate the need to marginalise over a redshift-dependent
shape measurement bias in all future cosmological analyses.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures. Submitted MNRA
Cosmological constraints from Subaru weak lensing cluster counts
We present results of weak lensing cluster counts obtained from 11 sq.deg
SuprimeCam data. Although the area is much smaller than previous work dealing
with weak lensing peak statistics, the number density of galaxies usable for
weak lensing analysis is about twice as large as those. The higher galaxy
number density reduces the noise in the weak lensing mass maps, and thus
increases the signal-to-noise ratio of peaks of the lensing signal due to
massive clusters. This enables us to construct a weak lensing selected cluster
sample by adopting a high threshold S/N, such that the contamination rate due
to false signals is small. We find 6 peaks with S/N>5. For all the peaks,
previously identified clusters of galaxies are matched within a separation of 1
arcmin, demonstrating good correspondence between the peaks and clusters of
galaxies. We evaluate the statistical error using mock weak lensing data, and
find Npeak=6+/-3.1 in an effective area of 9.0 sq.deg. We compare the measured
weak lensing cluster counts with the theoretical model prediction based on halo
models and place the constraint on Omega_m-sigma_8 plane which is found to be
consistent with currently standard LCDM models. It is demonstrated that the
weak lensing cluster counts can place a unique constraint on sigma_8-c_0 plane,
where c_0 is the normalization of the dark matter halo mass-concentration
relationship. Finally we discuss prospects for ongoing/future wide field
optical galaxy surveys.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, submitted to PASJ, comments welcom
Stability of Satellite Planes in M31 II: Effects of the Dark Subhalo Population
The planar arrangement of nearly half the satellite galaxies of M31 has been
a source of mystery and speculation since it was discovered. With a growing
number of other host galaxies showing these satellite galaxy planes, their
stability and longevity have become central to the debate on whether the
presence of satellite planes are a natural consequence of prevailing
cosmological models, or represent a challenge. Given the dependence of their
stability on host halo shape, we look into how a galaxy plane's dark matter
environment influences its longevity. An increased number of dark matter
subhalos results in increased interactions that hasten the deterioration of an
already-formed plane of satellite galaxies in spherical dark halos. The role of
total dark matter mass fraction held in subhalos in dispersing a plane of
galaxies present non trivial effects on plane longevity as well. But any
misalignments of plane inclines to major axes of flattened dark matter halos
lead to their lifetimes being reduced to < 3 Gyrs. Distributing > 40% of total
dark mass in subhalos in the overall dark matter distribution results in a
plane of satellite galaxies that is prone to change through the 5 Gyr
integration time period.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted to MNRAS September 22 201
Constraining Omega using weak gravitational lensing by clusters
The morphology of galaxy clusters reflects the epoch at which they formed and
hence depends on the value of the mean cosmological density, Omega. Recent
studies have shown that the distribution of dark matter in clusters can be
mapped from analysis of the small distortions in the shapes of background
galaxies induced by weak gravitational lensing in the cluster potential. We
construct new statistics to quantify the morphology of clusters which are
insensitive to limitations in the mass reconstruction procedure. By simulating
weak gravitational lensing in artificial clusters grown in numerical
simulations of the formation of clusters in three different cosmologies, we
obtain distributions of a quadrupole statistic which measures global deviations
from spherical symmetry in a cluster. These distributions are very sensitive to
the value of Omega_0 and, as a result, lensing observations of a small number
of clusters should be sufficient to place broad constraints on Omega_{0} and
certainly to distinguish between the extreme values of 0.2 and 1.Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. Compressed postscript also available at
ftp://star-ftp.dur.ac.uk/pub/preprints/wcf2.ps.g
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The LSST DESC data challenge 1: Generation and analysis of synthetic images for next-generation surveys
Data Challenge 1 (DC1) is the first synthetic data set produced by the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC). DC1 is designed to develop and validate data reduction and analysis and to study the impact of systematic effects that will affect the LSST data set. DC1 is comprised of r-band observations of 40 deg2 to 10 yr LSST depth. We present each stage of the simulation and analysis process: (a) generation, by synthesizing sources from cosmological N-body simulations in individual sensor-visit images with different observing conditions; (b) reduction using a development version of the LSST Science Pipelines; and (c) matching to the input cosmological catalogue for validation and testing. We verify that testable LSST requirements pass within the fidelity of DC1. We establish a selection procedure that produces a sufficiently clean extragalactic sample for clustering analyses and we discuss residual sample contamination, including contributions from inefficiency in star-galaxy separation and imperfect deblending. We compute the galaxy power spectrum on the simulated field and conclude that: (i) survey properties have an impact of 50 per cent of the statistical uncertainty for the scales and models used in DC1; (ii) a selection to eliminate artefacts in the catalogues is necessary to avoid biases in the measured clustering; and (iii) the presence of bright objects has a significant impact (2-6) in the estimated power spectra at small scales (> 1200), highlighting the impact of blending in studies at small angular scales in LSST
A bias in cosmic shear from galaxy selection: results from ray-tracing simulations
We identify and study a previously unknown systematic effect on cosmic shear
measurements, caused by the selection of galaxies used for shape measurement,
in particular the rejection of close (blended) galaxy pairs. We use ray-tracing
simulations based on the Millennium Simulation and a semi-analytical model of
galaxy formation to create realistic galaxy catalogues. From these, we quantify
the bias in the shear correlation functions by comparing measurements made from
galaxy catalogues with and without removal of close pairs. A likelihood
analysis is used to quantify the resulting shift in estimates of cosmological
parameters. The filtering of objects with close neighbours (a) changes the
redshift distribution of the galaxies used for correlation function
measurements, and (b) correlates the number density of sources in the
background with the density field in the foreground. This leads to a
scale-dependent bias of the correlation function of several percent,
translating into biases of cosmological parameters of similar amplitude. This
makes this new systematic effect potentially harmful for upcoming and planned
cosmic shear surveys. As a remedy, we propose and test a weighting scheme that
can significantly reduce the bias.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, version accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
The Dark Energy Survey
We describe the Dark Energy Survey (DES), a proposed optical-near infrared
survey of 5000 sq. deg of the South Galactic Cap to ~24th magnitude in SDSS
griz, that would use a new 3 sq. deg CCD camera to be mounted on the Blanco 4-m
telescope at Cerro Telolo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). The survey data
will allow us to measure the dark energy and dark matter densities and the dark
energy equation of state through four independent methods: galaxy clusters,
weak gravitational lensing tomography, galaxy angular clustering, and supernova
distances. These methods are doubly complementary: they constrain different
combinations of cosmological model parameters and are subject to different
systematic errors. By deriving the four sets of measurements from the same data
set with a common analysis framework, we will obtain important cross checks of
the systematic errors and thereby make a substantial and robust advance in the
precision of dark energy measurements.Comment: White Paper submitted to the Dark Energy Task Force, 42 page
Real-time Analysis and Selection Biases in the Supernova Legacy Survey
The Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) has produced a high-quality, homogeneous
sample of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) out to redshifts greater than z=1. In its
first four years of full operation (to June 2007), the SNLS discovered more
than 3000 transient candidates, 373 of which have been confirmed
spectroscopically as SNe Ia. Use of these SNe Ia in precision cosmology
critically depends on an analysis of the observational biases incurred in the
SNLS survey due to the incomplete sampling of the underlying SN Ia population.
This paper describes our real-time supernova detection and analysis procedures,
and uses detailed Monte Carlo simulations to examine the effects of Malmquist
bias and spectroscopic sampling. Such sampling effects are found to become
apparent at z~0.6, with a significant shift in the average magnitude of the
spectroscopically confirmed SN Ia sample towards brighter values for z>0.75. We
describe our approach to correct for these selection biases in our three-year
SNLS cosmological analysis (SNLS3), and present a breakdown of the systematic
uncertainties involved.Comment: Accepted for publication in A
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