581 research outputs found
Bias-Free Shear Estimation using Artificial Neural Networks
Bias due to imperfect shear calibration is the biggest obstacle when
constraints on cosmological parameters are to be extracted from large area weak
lensing surveys such as Pan-STARRS-3pi, DES or future satellite missions like
Euclid. We demonstrate that bias present in existing shear measurement
pipelines (e.g. KSB) can be almost entirely removed by means of neural
networks. In this way, bias correction can depend on the properties of the
individual galaxy instead on being a single global value. We present a
procedure to train neural networks for shear estimation and apply this to
subsets of simulated GREAT08 RealNoise data. We also show that circularization
of the PSF before measuring the shear reduces the scatter related to the PSF
anisotropy correction and thus leads to improved measurements, particularly on
low and medium signal-to-noise data. Our results are competitive with the best
performers in the GREAT08 competition, especially for the medium and higher
signal-to-noise sets. Expressed in terms of the quality parameter defined by
GREAT08 we achieve a Q = 40, 140 and 1300 without and 50, 200 and 1300 with
circularization for low, medium and high signal-to-noise data sets,
respectively.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in Ap
Automatic detection of arcs and arclets formed by gravitational lensing
We present an algorithm developed particularly to detect gravitationally
lensed arcs in clusters of galaxies. This algorithm is suited for automated
surveys as well as individual arc detections. New methods are used for image
smoothing and source detection. The smoothing is performed by so-called
anisotropic diffusion, which maintains the shape of the arcs and does not
disperse them. The algorithm is much more efficient in detecting arcs than
other source finding algorithms and the detection by eye.Comment: A&A in press, 12 pages, 16 figure
Detection of weak lensing by a cluster of galaxies at z=0.83
We report the detection of weak gravitational lensing of faint, distant
background galaxies by the rich, X-ray luminous cluster of galaxies MS1054-03
at z=0.83. This is the first measurement of weak lensing by a bona fide cluster
at such a high redshift. We detect tangential shear at the 5% - 10% level over
a range of radii 50'' < r < 250'' centered on the optical position of the
cluster. Two-dimensional mass reconstruction using galaxies with 21.5 < I <
25.5 shows a strong peak which coincides with the peak of the smoothed cluster
light distribution. Splitting this sample by magnitude (at I = 23.5) and color
(at R-I = 0.7), we find that the brighter and redder subsamples are only very
weakly distorted, indicating that the faint blue galaxies (FBG's), which
dominate the shear signal, are relatively more distant. The derived cluster
mass is quite sensitive to the N(z) for the FBG's. At one extreme, if all the
FBG's are at z_s = 3, then the mass within a Mpc aperture is \h1 , and the mass-to-light ratio is in solar units. For the derived mass is 70\%
higher and . If follows the no evolution model (in
shape) then , and if all the FBG's lie at z_s\la 1 the
required exceeds . These data provide clear evidence that large,
dense mass concentrations existed at early epochs; that they can be weighed
efficiently by weak lensing observations; and that most of the FBG's are at
high redshift.Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 15 pages (incl 8 figs, 3 of which are plates).
Plate images not included, but are available from
ftp://hubble.ifa.hawaii.edu/pub/ger/ms1054/ms1054_fig[1,3,5].ps.
PSF calibration requirements for dark energy from cosmic shear
The control of systematic effects when measuring galaxy shapes is one of the
main challenges for cosmic shear analyses. In this context, we study the
fundamental limitations on shear accuracy due to the measurement of the Point
Spread Function (PSF) from the finite number of stars. In order to do that, we
translate the accuracy required for cosmological parameter estimation to the
minimum number of stars over which the PSF must be calibrated. We first derive
our results analytically in the case of infinitely small pixels (i.e.
infinitely high resolution). Then image simulations are used to validate these
results and investigate the effect of finite pixel size in the case of an
elliptical gaussian PSF. Our results are expressed in terms of the minimum
number of stars required to calibrate the PSF in order to ensure that
systematic errors are smaller than statistical errors when estimating the
cosmological parameters. On scales smaller than the area containing this
minimum number of stars, there is not enough information to model the PSF. In
the case of an elliptical gaussian PSF and in the absence of dithering, 2
pixels per PSF Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) implies a 20% increase of the
minimum number of stars compared to the ideal case of infinitely small pixels;
0.9 pixels per PSF FWHM implies a factor 100 increase. In the case of a good
resolution and a typical Signal-to-Noise Ratio distribution of stars, we find
that current surveys need the PSF to be calibrated over a few stars, which may
explain residual systematics on scales smaller than a few arcmins. Future
all-sky cosmic shear surveys require the PSF to be calibrated over a region
containing about 50 stars.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, accepted by A&
Constraints On the Size Evolution of Brightest Cluster Galaxies
We measure the luminosity profiles of 16 brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) at
using high resolution F160W NICMOS and F814W WFPC2 HST imaging.
The heterogeneous sample is drawn from a variety of surveys: seven from
clusters in the Einstein Medium Sensitivity Survey, five from the Las Campanas
Distant Cluster Survey and its northern hemisphere precursor, and the remaining
four from traditional optical surveys. We find that the surface brightness
profiles of all but three of these BCGs are well described by a standard de
Vaucouleurs () profile out to at least and that the
biweight-estimated NICMOS effective radius of our high redshift BCGs ( kpc for km s Mpc, ) is times smaller than that measured for a local
BCG sample. If high redshift BCGs are in dynamical equilibrium and satisfy the
same scaling relations as low redshift ones, this change in size would
correspond to a mass growth of a factor of 2 since . However, the
biweight-estimated WFPC2 effective radius of our sample is 18 5.1 kpc,
which is fully consistent with the local sample. While we can rule out mass
accretion rates higher than a factor of 2 in our sample, the discrepancy
between our NICMOS and WFPC2 results, which after various tests we describe
appears to be physical, does not yet allow us to place strong constraints on
accretion rates below that level.Comment: ApJ accepted (566, 1, February 2002), 12 pages, uses emulateapj5.st
The Photometric Period and Variability of the Cataclysmic Variable V849 Herculis (PG 1633+115)
We report time-resolved photometry of the cataclysmic variable V849 Her, and
measure a period of 0.1414 \pm 0.0030 days (3.394 \pm 0.072 hours). We also
present photometry taken over several weeks in 2010 and 2011, as well as light
curves from 1995 to 2011 by the American Association of Variable Star
Observers. The spectra, absolute magnitude derived from infrared magnitudes,
and variability all suggest that V849 Her is a nova-like variable. The shallow
(0.5-magnitude) low states we observe resemble the erratic low states of the VY
Sculptoris stars, although they may recur quasi-periodically over an average
cycle of 12.462 \pm 0.074 days.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in New Astronom
Measuring the Reduced Shear
Neglecting the second order corrections in weak lensing measurements can lead
to a few percent uncertainties on cosmic shears, and becomes more important for
cluster lensing mass reconstructions. Existing methods which claim to measure
the reduced shears are not necessarily accurate to the second order when a
point spread function (PSF) is present. We show that the method of Zhang (2008)
exactly measures the reduced shears at the second order level in the presence
of PSF. A simple theorem is provided for further confirming our calculation,
and for judging the accuracy of any shear measurement method at the second
order based on its properties at the first order. The method of Zhang (2008) is
well defined mathematically. It does not require assumptions on the
morphologies of galaxies and the PSF. To reach a sub-percent level accuracy,
the CCD pixel size is required to be not larger than 1/3 of the Full Width at
Half Maximum (FWHM) of the PSF. Using a large ensemble (> 10^7) of mock
galaxies of unrestricted morphologies, we find that contaminations to the shear
signals from the noise of background photons can be removed in a well defined
way because they are not correlated with the source shapes. The residual shear
measurement errors due to background noise are consistent with zero at the
sub-percent level even when the amplitude of such noise reaches about 1/10 of
the source flux within the half-light radius of the source. This limit can in
principle be extended further with a larger galaxy ensemble in our simulations.
On the other hand, the source Poisson noise remains to be a cause of systematic
errors. For a sub-percent level accuracy, our method requires the amplitude of
the source Poisson noise to be less than 1/80 ~ 1/100 of the source flux within
the half-light radius of the source, corresponding to collecting roughly 10^4
source photons.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, minor changes from the previous
versio
Deep Image Translation with an Affinity-Based Change Prior for Unsupervised Multimodal Change Detection
Image translation with convolutional neural networks has recently been used as an approach to multimodal change detection. Existing approaches train the networks by exploiting supervised information of the change areas, which, however, is not always available. A main challenge in the unsupervised problem setting is to avoid that change pixels affect the learning of the translation function. We propose two new network architectures trained with loss functions weighted by priors that reduce the impact of change pixels on the learning objective. The change prior is derived in an unsupervised fashion from relational pixel information captured by domain-specific affinity matrices. Specifically, we use the vertex degrees associated with an absolute affinity difference matrix and demonstrate their utility in combination with cycle consistency and adversarial training. The proposed neural networks are compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. Experiments conducted on three real data sets show the effectiveness of our methodology
Weak Lensing by High-Redshift Clusters of Galaxies - I: Cluster Mass Reconstruction
We present the results of a weak lensing survey of six high-redshift (z >
0.5), X-ray selected clusters of galaxies. We have obtained ultra-deep R-band
images of each cluster with the Keck Telescope, and have measured a weak
lensing signal from each cluster. From the background galaxy ellipticities we
create two-dimensional maps of the surface mass density of each cluster. We
find that the substructure seen in the mass reconstructions typically agree
well with substructure in both the cluster galaxy distributions and X-ray
images of the clusters. We also measure the one-dimensional radial profiles of
the lensing signals and fit these with both isothermal spheres and "universal"
CDM profiles. We find that the more massive clusters are less compact and not
as well fit by isothermal spheres as the less massive clusters, possibly
indicating that they are still in the process of collapse.Comment: 43 pages, 15 figures, uses aastex, submitted to ApJ 4 color plates
produced here as jpg's, larger versions of the jpgs can be found at
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~clow
Gravitational lensing due to dark matter modelled by vector field
The specified constant 4-vector field reproducing the spherically symmetric
stationary metric of cold dark matter halo in the region of flat rotation
curves results in a constant angle of light deflection at small impact
distances. The effective deflecting mass is factor greater than the
dark matter mass. The perturbation of deflection picture due to the halo edge
is evaluated.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX iopart class, 10 eps figures; explanaitions and
discussion are extended and improved, reference added; version to appear in
Classical and Quantum Gravit
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