Concepts developed in the gravitational lensing techniques such as shear, convergence, tangential and radial arcs maybe used to see how tenable inhomogeneous models proposed to explain the acceleration of the universe models are. We study the widely discussed LTB cosmological models. It turns out that for the observer sitting at origin of a global LTB solution the shear vanishes as in the FRW models, while the value of convergence is different which may lead to observable cosmological effects. We also consider Swiss-cheese models proposed recently based on LTB with an observer sitting in the FRW part. It turns out that they have different behavior as far as the formation of radial and tangential arcs are concerned.
In this manuscript of the habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR), the author presents some of his work over the last ten years. The main topic of this thesis is cosmic shear, the distortion of images of distant galaxies due to weak gravitational lensing by the large-scale structure in the Universe. Cosmic shear has become a powerful probe into the nature of dark matter and the origin of the current accelerated expansion of the Universe. Over the last years, cosmic shear has evolved into a reliable and robust cosmological probe, providing measurements of the expansion history of the Univer…
We present a novel statistic to extract cosmological information in weak lensing data: the lensing minima. We also investigate the effect of baryons on the cosmological constraints from peak and minimum counts. Using the \texttt{MassiveNuS} simulations, we find that lensing minima are sensitive to non-Gaussian cosmological information and are complementary to the lensing power spectrum and peak counts. For an LSST-like survey, we obtain $95\%$ credible intervals from a combination of lensing minima and peaks that are significantly stronger than from the power spectrum alone, by $44\%$, $11\%$,…
We present cosmological parameter constraints based on a joint modeling of galaxy-lensing cross correlations and galaxy clustering measurements in the SDSS, marginalizing over small-scale modeling uncertainties using mock galaxy catalogs, without explicit modeling of galaxy bias. We show that our modeling method is robust to the impact of different choices for how galaxies occupy dark matter halos and to the impact of baryonic physics (at the $\sim2\%$ level in cosmological parameters) and test for the impact of covariance on the likelihood analysis and of the survey window function on the the…
We infer gravitational lensing shear and convergence fields from galaxy ellipticity catalogs under a spatial process prior for the lensing potential. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithm with simulated Gaussian-distributed cosmological lensing shear maps and a reconstruction of the mass distribution of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 781 using galaxy ellipticities measured with the Deep Lens Survey. Given interim posterior samples of lensing shear or convergence fields on the sky, we describe an algorithm to infer cosmological parameters via lens field marginalization. In the most …
The ratio between the CMB lensing/galaxy counts and the galaxy shear/galaxy counts cross-correlations combines the information from different cosmological probes to infer cosmographic measurements that are less dependent on astrophysical uncertainties and can constrain the geometry of the Universe. We discuss the future perspectives for the measurement of this lensing ratio as previously introduced, i.e. with the use of the Limber and flat-sky approximations and neglecting all the effects on the galaxy survey from observing on the past lightcone. We then show how the cosmological information i…
Cluster strong lensing cosmography is a promising probe of the background geometry of the Universe and several studies have emerged, thanks to the increased quality of observations using space and ground-based telescopes. For the first time, we use a sample of five cluster strong lenses to measure the values of cosmological parameters and combine them with those from classical probes. In order to assess the degeneracies and the effectiveness of strong-lensing cosmography in constraining the background geometry of the Universe, we adopt four cosmological scenarios. We find good constraining pow…
As one of the probes of universe, strong gravitational lensing systems allow us to compare different cosmological models and constrain vital cosmological parameters. This purpose can be reached from the dynamic and geometry properties of strong gravitational lensing systems, for instance, time-delay $Δτ$ of images, the velocity dispersion $σ$ of the lensing galaxies and the combination of these two effects, $Δτ/σ^2$. In this paper, in order to carry out one-on-one comparisons between $Λ$CDM universe and $R_h=ct$ universe, we use a sample containing 36 strong lensing systems with the measuremen…
We present the gauge-invariant formalism of cosmological weak lensing, accounting for all the relativistic effects due to the scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations at the linear order. While the light propagation is fully described by the geodesic equation, the relation of the photon wavevector to the physical quantities requires the specification of the frames, where they are defined. By constructing the local tetrad bases at the observer and the source positions, we clarify the relation of the weak lensing observables such as the convergence, the shear, and the rotation to the physical si…
We investigate how the cosmological constraints from SNe Ia are improved by including the effects of weak-lensing convergence. To do so, we introduce the lognormal function as the convergence PDF modeling the lensing scatter of SN Ia magnitude, and apply a sample selection for SNe Ia to avoid strongly lensed samples. Comparing with the contribution of other uncertainties (e.g., the intrinsic magnitude scatter), we find that the lensing effect is dominant at $z > 1$. Then forecasting the parameter constraints for the Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope survey, we show that considering the weak…
The weak lensing magnification of Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) is sensitive to the clustering of matter, and provides an independent cosmological probe complementary to SN Ia distance measurements. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is uniquely sensitive to this measurement as it can discover high redshift SNe Ia and measure them with high precision. We present a methodology for reconstructing the probability distribution of the weak lensing magnification $μ$ of SNe Ia, $p(μ)$, from observational data, and using it to constrain cosmological parameters. We find that the reconstructed $p(μ)$ c…
Modifications to General Relativity (GR) often incorporate screening mechanisms in order to remain compatible with existing tests of gravity. The screening is less efficient in underdense regions, which suggests that cosmic voids can be a useful cosmological probe for constraining modified gravity models. In particular, weak lensing by voids has been proposed as a promising test of such theories. Usually, voids are identified from galaxy distributions, making them biased tracers of the underlying matter field. An alternative approach is to study voids identified in weak lensing maps -- weak le…
A number of recent, low-redshift, lensing measurements hint at a universe in which the amplitude of lensing is lower than that predicted from the $Λ$CDM model fit to the data of the Planck CMB mission. Here we use the auto- and cross-correlation signal of unWISE galaxies and Planck CMB lensing maps to infer cosmological parameters at low redshift. In particular, we consider three unWISE samples (denoted as "blue", "green" and "red") at median redshifts $z \sim 0.6$, $1.1$ and 1.5, which fully cover the Dark Energy dominated era. Our cross-correlation measurements, with combined significance $S…
We derived constraints on cosmological parameters using weak lensing peak statistics measured on the $\sim130~{\rm deg}^2$ of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey (CS82). This analysis demonstrates the feasibility of using peak statistics in cosmological studies. For our measurements, we considered peaks with signal-to-noise ratio in the range of $ν=[3,6]$. For a flat $Λ$CDM model with only $(Ω_{\rm m}, σ_8)$ as free parameters, we constrained the parameters of the following relation $Σ_8=σ_8(Ω_{\rm m}/0.27)^α$ to be: $Σ_8=0.82 \pm 0.03 $ and $α=0.43\pm 0.02$. The $α$ value foun…
Exploring Cosmological Constraints of the Void-Lensing Cross-Correlation in the CSST Photometric Survey
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(UCAS)（中国科学院大学天文与空间科学学院）；Science Center for China Space Station Telescope, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Science（中国科学院国家天文台中国空间站望远镜科学中心）
The magnification of galaxies in modern galaxy surveys induces additional correlations in the cosmic shear, galaxy-galaxy lensing and clustering observables used in modern lensing "3x2pt" analyses, due to sample selection. In this paper, we emulate the magnification contribution to all three observables utilising the SLICS simulations suite, and test the sensitivity of the cosmological model, galaxy bias and redshift distribution calibration to un-modelled magnification in a Stage-IV-like survey using Monte-Carlo sampling. We find that magnification cannot be ignored in any single or combined …
Hierarchical cosmological constraints through strong lensing distance ratio
National Centre for Nuclear Research（国家核研究中心）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学物理学院）；Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学天文与前沿科学研究院）
We construct forecasts for cosmological parameter constraints from weak gravitational lensing surveys involving the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Considering matter content, dark energy and modified gravity parameters, we show that the first phase of the SKA (SKA1) can be competitive with other Stage III experiments such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and that the full SKA (SKA2) can potentially form tighter constraints than Stage IV optical weak lensing experiments, such as those that will be conducted with LSST, WFIRST-AFTA or Euclid-like facilities. Using weak lensing alone, going from SKA…
In this paper we probe five cosmological models for which the dark energy equation of state parameter, $w(z)$, is parameterized as a function of redshift using strong lensing data in the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. We constrain the parameters of the $w(z)$ functions by reconstructing the lens model under each one of these cosmologies with strong lensing measurements from two galaxy clusters: Abell 1689 and a mock cluster, Ares, from the Hubble Frontier Fields Comparison Challenge, to validate our methodology. To quantify how the cosmological constraints are biased due to systematic effects in t…
We determine the error introduced in a joint halo model analysis of galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy clustering observables when adopting the standard approximation of linear halo bias. Considering the Kilo-Degree Survey, we forecast that ignoring the non-linear halo bias would result in up to 5$σ$ offsets in the recovered cosmological parameters describing structure growth, $S_8$, and the matter density parameter, $Ω_{\mathrm{m}}$. We include the scales $10^{-1.3}<r_{\rm{p}} \ / h^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}<10$ in the data vector, and the direction of these offsets are shown to depend on the freedom…
Strong gravitational lensing provides a geometric probe of cosmology in a unique manner through distance ratios involving the source and lens. This is well known for the time delay distance derived from measured delays between lightcurves of the images of variable sources such as quasars. Recently, double source plane lens systems involving two constant sources lensed by the same foreground lens have been proposed as another probe, involving a different ratio of distances measured from the image positions and fairly insensitive to the lens modeling. Here we demonstrate that these two different…
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have recently been demonstrated on synthetic data to improve upon the precision of cosmological inference. In particular they have the potential to yield more precise cosmological constraints from weak lensing mass maps than the two-point functions. We present the cosmological results with a CNN from the KiDS-450 tomographic weak lensing dataset, constraining the total matter density $Ω_m$, the fluctuation amplitude $σ_8$, and the intrinsic alignment amplitude $A_{\rm{IA}}$. We use a grid of N-body simulations to generate a training set of tomographic weak l…
Unprecedentedly precise cosmic microwave background (CMB) data are expected from ongoing and near-future CMB Stage-III and IV surveys, which will yield reconstructed CMB lensing maps with effective resolution approaching several arcminutes. The small-scale CMB lensing fluctuations receive non-negligible contributions from nonlinear structure in the late-time density field. These fluctuations are not fully characterized by traditional two-point statistics, such as the power spectrum. Here, we use $N$-body ray-tracing simulations of CMB lensing maps to examine two higher-order statistics: the le…
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 ra…
Weak lensing peak counts are a powerful statistical tool for constraining cosmological parameters. So far, this method has been applied only to surveys with relatively small areas, up to several hundred square degrees. As future surveys will provide weak lensing datasets with size of thousands of square degrees, the demand on the theoretical prediction of the peak statistics will become heightened. In particular, large simulations of increased cosmological volume are required. In this work, we investigate the possibility of using simulations generated with the fast Comoving-Lagrangian accelera…
Weak gravitational lensing causes subtle changes in the apparent shapes of galaxies due to the bending of light by the gravity of foreground masses. By measuring the shapes of large numbers of galaxies (millions in recent surveys, up to tens of billions in future surveys) we can infer the parameters that determine cosmology. Imperfections in the detectors used to record images of the sky can introduce changes in the apparent shape of galaxies, which in turn can bias the inferred cosmological parameters. In this paper we consider the effect of two widely discussed sensor imperfections: tree-rin…
Maximising the information that can be extracted from weak lensing measurements is a key goal for upcoming surveys such as LSST and Euclid. This is typically achieved through statistics that are complementary to the cosmic shear two-point correlation function, the most well established of which is the weak lensing peak abundance. In this work, we study the clustering of weak lensing peaks, and present parameter constraint forecasts for an LSST-like survey. We use the cosmoslics $w$CDM simulations to measure the peak two-point correlation function for a range of cosmological parameters, and use…
Accurate cosmological emulator for the probability distribution function of gravitational lensing of point sources
INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste（意大利国家天体物理研究所的里雅斯特天文台）；Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo（圣埃斯皮里图联邦大学）；IFPU – Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe（宇宙基础物理研究所）；INFN – Sezione di Trieste（意大利国家核物理研究所的里雅斯特分部）；ICSC – Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in High Performance Computing, Big Data e Quantum Computing（高性能计算、大数据和量子计算国家研究中心）；Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas（巴西物理研究中心）；Observatório do Valongo, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro（瓦隆戈天文台，里约热内卢联邦大学）
The advent of Stage IV weak lensing surveys will open up a new era in precision cosmology. These experiments will offer more than an order-of-magnitude leap in precision over existing surveys, and we must ensure that the accuracy of our theory matches this. Accordingly, it is necessary to explicitly evaluate the impact of the theoretical assumptions made in current analyses on upcoming surveys. One effect typically neglected in present analyses is the Doppler-shift of the measured source comoving distances. Using Fisher matrices, we calculate the biases on the cosmological parameter values inf…
Probing the Cosmological Principle with CMB lensing and cosmic shear
University of the Western Cape（西开普敦大学）；National Institute for Theoretical & Computational Sciences（理论与计算科学国家研究所）；Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier, CNRS & Université de Montpellier（蒙彼利埃宇宙与粒子实验室，法国国家科学研究中心与蒙彼利埃大学）；Queen Mary University of London（伦敦玛丽女王大学）；Université de Genève（日内瓦大学）
We investigate the feasibility of measuring weak gravitational lensing using 21cm intensity mapping with special emphasis on the performance of the planned Square Kilometre Array (SKA). We find that the current design for SKA-Mid should be able to measure the evolution of the lensing power spectrum at z~2-3 using this technique. This will be a probe of the expansion history of the universe and gravity at a unique range in redshift. The signal-to-noise is found to be highly dependent on evolution of the neutral hydrogen fraction in the universe with a higher HI density resulting in stronger sig…
Optical weak lensing surveys have become a powerful tool for precision cosmology, but remain subject to systematic effects that can severely bias cosmological parameter estimates if not carefully removed. We discuss the possibility of performing complementary weak lensing surveys at radio/microwave frequencies, using detections of CO-emitting galaxies with resolved continuum images from ngVLA. This method has completely different systematic uncertainties to optical weak lensing shear measurements (e.g. in terms of blending, PSF, and redshift uncertainties), and can provide additional informati…
Fast cosmological transients such as fast radio bursts (FRBs) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) represent a class of sources more compact than any other cosmological object. As such they are sensitive to significant magnification via gravitational lensing from a class of lenses which are not well-constrained by observations today. Low-mass primordial black holes are one such candidate which may constitute a significant fraction of the Universe's dark matter. Current observations only constrain their density in the nearby Universe, giving fast transients from cosmological distances the potential to f…
As weak lensing surveys are becoming deeper and cover larger areas, information will be available on small angular scales down to the arcmin level. To extract this extra information, accurate modelling of baryonic effects is necessary. In this work, we adopt a baryonic correction model, which includes gas both bound inside and ejected from dark matter (DM) haloes, a central galaxy, and changes in the DM profile induced by baryons. We use this model to incorporate baryons into a large suite of DM-only $N$-body simulations, covering a grid of 75 cosmologies in the $Ω_\mathrm{m}-σ_8$ parameter sp…
We present a new cosmological analysis of the galaxy clusters in the Planck MMF3 cosmology sample with a cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing calibration of the cluster masses. As demonstrated by Planck, galaxy clusters detected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect offer a powerful way to constrain cosmological parameters such as $Ω_{\mathrm{m}}$ and $σ_8$. Determining the absolute cluster mass scale is, however, difficult, and some recent calibrations have yielded cosmological constraints in apparent tension with constraints in the $Λ$CDM model derived from the power spectra of the pri…
In this paper, we assemble a well-defined sample of early-type gravitational lenses extracted from a large collection of 158 systems, and use the redshift distribution of galactic-scale lenses to test the standard cosmological model ($Λ$CDM) and the modified gravity theory (DGP). Two additional sub-samples are also included to account for possible selection effect introduced by the detectability of lens galaxies. Our results show that independent measurement of the matter density parameter ($Ω_m$) could be expected from such strong lensing statistics. Based on future measurements of strong len…
We discover a linear relation between two sets of galaxy-lensing cross-correlations. This linear relation holds, as long as light follows the geodesic and the metric is Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW). Violation of the cosmological principle (and equivalently the FLRW metric) will break this linear relation. Therefore it provides a powerful test of the cosmological principle, based on direct observables and relied on no specific cosmological models. We demonstrate that stage IV galaxy surveys and CMB-S4 experiments will be able to test this linear relation stringently and therefore …
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are attractive objects for constraining the nature of dark energy in a way complementary to other cosmological probes, especially at high redshifts. However, the apparent magnitude of distant GRBs can be distorted by the gravitational lensing from the density fluctuations along the line of sight. We investigate the gravitational lensing effect on the cosmological parameters and dark energy equation of state from GRBs. We first calibrated the GRB luminosity relations without assuming any cosmological models. The luminosity distances of low-redshift GRBs were calibrated w…
Cosmological weak lensing has been a highly successful and rapidly developing research field since the first detection of cosmic shear in 2000. However, it has recently been pointed out in Yoo et al. that the standard weak lensing formalism yields gauge-dependent results and, hence, does not meet the level of accuracy demanded by the next generation of weak lensing surveys. Here, we show that the Jacobi mapping formalism provides a solid alternative to the standard formalism, as it accurately describes all the relativistic effects contributing to the weak lensing observables. We calculate gaug…
