43 research outputs found
Increasing the lensing figure of merit through higher order convergence moments
The unprecedented quality, the increased data set, and the wide area of ongoing and near future weak lensing surveys allows one to move beyond the standard two points statistics, thus making it worthwhile to investigate higher order probes. As an interesting step toward this direction, we explore the use of higher order moments (HOM) of the convergence field as a way to increase the lensing figure of merit (FoM). To this end, we rely on simulated convergence to first show that HOM can be measured and calibrated so that it is indeed possible to predict them for a given cosmological model provided suitable nuisance parameters are introduced and then marginalized over. We then forecast the accuracy on cosmological parameters from the use of HOM alone and in combination with standard shear power spectra tomography. It turns out that HOM allow one to break some common degeneracies, thus significantly boosting the overall FoM. We also qualitatively discuss possible systematics and how they can be dealt with
Testing the distance duality relation with present and future data
The assumptions that "light propagates along null geodesics of the spacetime
metric" and "the number of photons is conserved along the light path" lead to
the distance duality relation (DDR), ,
with and the luminosity and angular diameter distances to a
source at redshift . In order to test the DDR, we follow the usual strategy
comparing the angular diameter distances of a set of clusters, inferred from X
- ray and radio data, with the luminosity distance at the same cluster redshift
using the local regression technique to estimate from Type Ia
Supernovae (SNeIa) Hubble diagram. In order to both strengthen the constraints
on the DDR and get rid of the systematics related to the unknown cluster
geometry, we also investigate the possibility to use Baryon Acoustic
Oscillations (BAO) to infer from future BAO surveys. As a test case,
we consider the proposed Euclid mission investigating the precision can be
afforded on from the expected SNeIa and BAO data. We find that the
combination of BAO and the local regression coupled allows to reduce the errors
on by a factor two if one is forced and future data are used. On the other hand, although the
statistical error on is not significantly reduced, the constraints on
this quantity will be nevertheless ameliorated thanks to the reduce impact of
systematics.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, accepted for publication on Physical
Review
Hunting for Ghosts: Low Surface Brightness Galaxies from Pixels
AbstractWe outline an approach devoted to the detection of low surface brightness galaxies on astronomical images. We use a multi-scale approach, take into account sources of incompleteness and check selection functions both analytically and with simulations
Minkowski Functionals of Convergence Maps and the Lensing Figure of Merit
Minkowski functionals (MFs) quantify the topological properties of a given
field probing its departure from Gaussianity. We investigate their use on
lensing convergence maps in order to see whether they can provide further
insights on the underlying cosmology with respect to the standard second-order
statistics, i.e., cosmic shear tomography. To this end, we first present a
method to match theoretical predictions with measured MFs taking care of the
shape noise, imperfections in the map reconstruction, and inaccurate
description of the nonlinearities in the matter power spectrum and bispectrum.
We validate this method against simulated maps reconstructed from shear fields
generated by the MICE simulation. We then perform a Fisher matrix analysis to
forecast the accuracy on cosmological parameters from a joint MFs and shear
tomography analysis. It turns out that MFs are indeed helpful to break the
-- degeneracy thus generating a sort of chain
reaction leading to an overall increase of the Figure of Merit.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Matches published version in PR
Large-scale retrospective relative spectro-photometric self-calibration in space
We consider the application of relative self-calibration using overlap
regions to spectroscopic galaxy surveys that use slit-less spectroscopy. This
method is based on that developed for the SDSS by Padmanabhan at al. (2008) in
that we consider jointly fitting and marginalising over calibrator brightness,
rather than treating these as free parameters. However, we separate the
calibration of the detector-to-detector from the full-focal-plane
exposure-to-exposure calibration. To demonstrate how the calibration procedure
will work, we simulate the procedure for a potential implementation of the
spectroscopic component of the wide Euclid survey. We study the change of
coverage and the determination of relative multiplicative errors in flux
measurements for different dithering configurations. We use the new method to
study the case where the flat-field across each exposure or detector is
measured precisely and only exposure-to-exposure or detector-to-detector
variation in the flux error remains. We consider several base dither patterns
and find that they strongly influence the ability to calibrate, using this
methodology. To enable self-calibration, it is important that the survey
strategy connects different observations with at least a minimum amount of
overlap, and we propose an "S"-pattern for dithering that fulfills this
requirement. The final survey strategy adopted by Euclid will have to optimise
for a number of different science goals and requirements. The large-scale
calibration of the spectroscopic galaxy survey is clearly cosmologically
crucial, but is not the only one.Comment: 23 pages, 19 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 201
Constraining Modified Gravity with Euclid
Future proposed satellite missions as Euclid can offer the opportunity to
test general relativity on cosmic scales through mapping of the galaxy weak
lensing signal. In this paper we forecast the ability of these experiments to
constrain modified gravity scenarios as those predicted by scalar-tensor and
theories. We found that Euclid will improve constraints expected from
the PLANCK satellite on these modified gravity models by two orders of
magnitude. We discuss parameter degeneracies and the possible biases introduced
by modified gravity
On the shear estimation bias induced by the spatial variation of colour across galaxy profiles
The spatial variation of the colour of a galaxy may introduce a bias in the
measurement of its shape if the PSF profile depends on wavelength. We study how
this bias depends on the properties of the PSF and the galaxies themselves. The
bias depends on the scales used to estimate the shape, which may be used to
optimise methods to reduce the bias. Here we develop a general approach to
quantify the bias. Although applicable to any weak lensing survey, we focus on
the implications for the ESA Euclid mission.
Based on our study of synthetic galaxies we find that the bias is a few times
10^-3 for a typical galaxy observed by Euclid. Consequently, it cannot be
neglected and needs to be accounted for. We demonstrate how one can do so using
spatially resolved observations of galaxies in two filters. We show that HST
observations in the F606W and F814W filters allow us to model and reduce the
bias by an order of magnitude, sufficient to meet Euclid's scientific
requirements. The precision of the correction is ultimately determined by the
number of galaxies for which spatially-resolved observations in at least two
filters are available. We use results from the Millennium Simulation to
demonstrate that archival HST data will be sufficient for the tomographic
cosmic shear analysis with the Euclid dataset.Comment: MNRAS submitted, 18 pages, 13 Figure
The zCOSMOS 10k-Bright Spectroscopic Sample
We present spectroscopic redshifts of a large sample of galaxies with I_(AB) < 22.5 in the COSMOS field, measured from spectra of 10,644 objects that have been obtained in the first two years of observations in the zCOSMOS-bright redshift survey. These include a statistically complete subset of 10,109 objects. The average accuracy of individual redshifts is 110 km s^(–1), independent of redshift. The reliability of individual redshifts is described by a Confidence Class that has been empirically calibrated through repeat spectroscopic observations of over 600 galaxies. There is very good agreement between spectroscopic and photometric redshifts for the most secure Confidence Classes. For the less secure Confidence Classes, there is a good correspondence between the fraction of objects with a consistent photometric redshift and the spectroscopic repeatability, suggesting that the photometric redshifts can be used to indicate which of the less secure spectroscopic redshifts are likely right and which are probably wrong, and to give an indication of the nature of objects for which we failed to determine a redshift. Using this approach, we can construct a spectroscopic sample that is 99% reliable and which is 88% complete in the sample as a whole, and 95% complete in the redshift range 0.5 < z < 0.8. The luminosity and mass completeness levels of the zCOSMOS-bright sample of galaxies is also discussed
Abell 611. I. Weak lensing analysis with LBC
Aims: The Large Binocular Cameras (LBC) are two twin wide field cameras (FOV∼23′×25′) mounted at the prime foci of the 8.4 m Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). We performed a weak lensing analysis of the z=0.288 cluster Abell 611 on g-band data obtained by the blue-optimized LBC in order to estimate the cluster mass. Methods: Owing to the complexity of the PSF of LBC, we decided to use two different approaches, KSB and shapelets, to measure the shape of background galaxies and to derive the shear signal produced by the cluster. Then we estimated the cluster mass with both aperture densitometry and parametric model fits. Results: The combination of the large aperture of the telescope and the wide field of view allowed us to map a region well beyond
the expected virial radius of the cluster and to get a high surface density for background galaxies (23 galaxies/arcmin2). This made it possible to estimate an accurate mass for Abell 611. We find that the mass within 1.5 Mpc is (8±3)×10^14 M from the aperture mass technique and (5±1)×10^14 M using the model fitting by an NFW mass density profile for both shapelet and KSB methods.
This analysis demonstrates that LBC is a powerful instrument for weak gravitational lensing studies
SKA synergy with Microwave Background studies
The extremely high sensitivity and resolution of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be useful for addressing a wide set of themes relevant for cosmology, in synergy with current and future cosmic microwave background (CMB) projects. Many of these themes also have a link with future optical-IR and X-ray observations. We discuss the scientific perspectives for these goals, the instrumental requirements and the observational and data analysis approaches, and identify several topics that are important for cosmology and astrophysics at different cosmic epochs