Gravitational lensing by large scale structure introduces non-Gaussianity into the Cosmic Microwave Background and imprints a new observable, which can be used as a cosmological probe. We apply a four-point estimator to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 7-year coadded temperature maps alone to reconstruct the gravitational lensing signal. The Gaussian bias is simulated and subtracted, and the higher order bias is investigated. We measure a gravitational lensing signal with a statistical amplitude of $\mathcal {C}$ = $1.27\pm 0.98$ using all the correlations of the W- and V-band Differencing Assemblies (DAs). We therefore conclude that WMAP 7-year data alone, can not detect lensing.
We attempt to make a direct measurement of the weak lensing signal from the WMAP 7-year data. We apply the real-space implementation of the optimal quadratic estimator on the maps produced by the W-band Differencing Assemblies. We obtain a weak lensing amplitude parameter of $A_{L}=0.99\pm1.67$ after correcting for several sources of bias. The error budget includes a contribution from the bias removal procedure. Despite the demonstrated insensitivity of the real-space estimator to uncorrelated noise, we conclude that this detection is not statistically significant. We expect that a full-sky, h…
We measure the skewness power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies optimized for a detection of the secondary bispectrum generated by the correlation of the CMB lensing potential with integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. The covariance of our measurements is generated by Monte-Carlo simulations of Gaussian CMB fields with noise properties consistent with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 5-year data. When interpreting multi-frequency measurements we also take into account the confusion resulting from unresolved radio point sources…
Statistical isotropy (SI) has been one of the simplifying assumptions in cosmological model building. Experiments like WMAP and PLANCK are attempting to test this assumption by searching for specific signals in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) two point correlation function. Modifications to this correlation function due to gravitational lensing by the large scale structure (LSS) surrounding us have been ignored in this context. Gravitational lensing will induce signals which mimic isotropy violation even in an isotropic universe. The signal detected in the Bipolar Spherical Harmonic (Bip…
Using the 5 year WMAP data, we re-investigate claims of non-Gaussianities and asymmetries detected in local curvature statistics of the 1 year WMAP data. In Hansen et al 2004, it was found that the northern ecliptic hemisphere was non-Gaussian at the ~1% level testing the densities of hill-, lake and saddle points based on the second derivatives of the CMB temperature map. The 5 year WMAP data has a much lower noise level and better control of systematics. Using these, we find that the anomalies are still present at a consistent level. Also the direction of maximum non-Gaussianity remains. Due…
Constraining the relation between the richness $N$ and the halo mass $M$ over a wide redshift range for optically-selected clusters is a key ingredient for cluster-related science in optical surveys, including the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. We measure stacked weak lensing profiles around 1747 HSC CAMIRA clusters over a redshift range of $0.1\leq z_{\rm cl}\leq 1.0$ with $N\geq 15$ using the HSC first-year shear catalog covering $\sim$$140$ ${\rm deg^2}$. The exquisite depth and image quality of the HSC survey allow us to measure lensing signals around the high-redshift clusters at …
We use South Pole Telescope data from 2008 and 2009 to detect the non-Gaussian signature in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) produced by gravitational lensing and to measure the power spectrum of the projected gravitational potential. We constrain the ratio of the measured amplitude of the lensing signal to that expected in a fiducial LCDM cosmological model to be 0.86 +/- 0.16, with no lensing disfavored at 6.3 sigma. Marginalizing over LCDM cosmological models allowed by the WMAP7 results in a measurement of A_lens=0.90+/-0.19, indicating that the amplitude of matter fluctuations over t…
We present a novel estimate of the cosmological microwave background (CMB) map by combining the two latest full-sky microwave surveys: WMAP nine-year and Planck PR1. The joint processing benefits from a recently introduced component separation method coined "local-generalized morphological component analysis'' (LGMCA) based on the sparse distribution of the foregrounds in the wavelet domain. The proposed estimation procedure takes advantage of the IRIS 100 micron as an extra observation on the galactic center for enhanced dust removal. We show that this new CMB map presents several interesting…
We constrain the primordial non-Gaussianity parameter of the local model f_{NL} using the skewness power spectrum associated with the two-to-one cumulant correlator of cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies. This bispectrum-related power spectrum was constructed after weighting the temperature map with the appropriate window functions to form an estimator that probes the multipolar dependence of the underlying bispectrum associated with the primordial non-Gaussianity. We also estimate a separate skewness power spectrum sensitive more strongly to unresolved point sources. When com…
We make a more general determination of the inflationary observables in the standard 4-D and 5-D single-field inflationary scenarios, by the exact reconstruction of the dynamics of the inflation potential during the observable inflation with minimal number of assumptions: the computation does not assume the slow-roll approximation and is valid in all regimes if the field is monotonically rolling down its potential. Making use of the {\em Hamilton-Jacobi} formalism developed for the 5-D single-field inflation model,we compute the scale dependence of the amplitudes of the scalarand tensor pertur…
In the 5-year WMAP data analysis, a new parametrization form for dark energy equation-of-state was used, and it has been shown that the equation-of-state, $w(z)$, crosses the cosmological-constant boundary $w=-1$. Based on this observation, in this paper, we investigate the reconstruction of quintom dark energy model. As a single-real-scalar-field model of dark energy, the generalized ghost condensate model provides us with a successful mechanism for realizing the quintom-like behavior. Therefore, we reconstruct this scalar-field quintom dark energy model from the WMAP 5-year observational res…
We study the CMB lensing signature of a pre-inationary particle (PIP), assuming it is responsible for the giant rings anomaly that was found recently in the WMAP data. Simulating Planck-like data we find that generically the CMB lensing signal to noise ratio associated with such a PIP is quite small and it would be difficult to cross correlate the temperature giant rings with the CMB lensing signal. However, if the pre-inationary particle is also responsible for the bulk flow measured from the local large scale structure, which happens to point roughly at the same direction as the giant rings,…
In this article, we describe a new estimate of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) intensity map reconstructed by a joint analysis of the full Planck 2015 data (PR2) and WMAP nine-years. It provides more than a mere update of the CMB map introduced in (Bobin et al. 2014b) since it benefits from an improvement of the component separation method L-GMCA (Local-Generalized Morphological Component Analysis) that allows the efficient separation of correlated components (Bobin et al. 2015). Based on the most recent CMB data, we further confirm previous results (Bobin et al. 2014b) showing that the …
An incomplete sky coverage poses difficulties in the extraction of the weak lensing information from the CMB. We test the reconstruction of the weak lensing convergence from CMB maps to which masks of point sources have been applied. We use the quadratic estimator with a kernel with finite support acting in real space for a Planck simulation. We recover the lensing signal without significant loss of power or addition of spurious correlations, thus showing that masking defected pixels does not affect the reconstruction of the weak lensing convergence in real space.
We consider the reconstruction of the CMB lensing potential and its power spectrum of the full sphere in presence of sky-cuts due to point sources and Galactic contaminations. Those two effects are treated separately. Small regions contaminated by point sources are filled in using Gaussian constrained realizations. The Galactic plane is simply masked using an apodized mask before lensing reconstruction. This algorithm recovers the power spectrum of the lensing potential with no significant bias.
We present a concept study on weak lensing map reconstruction through the cosmic magnification effect in galaxy number density distribution. We propose a minimal variance linear estimator to minimize both the dominant systematical and statistical errors in the map reconstruction. It utilizes the distinctively different flux dependences to separate the cosmic magnification signal from the overwhelming galaxy intrinsic clustering noise. It also minimizes the shot noise error by an optimal weighting scheme on the galaxy number density in each flux bin. Our method is in principle applicable to all…
Reconstructed maps of the lensing convergence of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) will play a major role in precision cosmology in coming years. CMB lensing maps will enable calibration of the masses of high-redshift galaxy clusters and will yield precise measurements of the growth of cosmic structure through cross-correlations with galaxy surveys. During the next decade, CMB lensing reconstruction will rely heavily on temperature data, rather than polarization, thus necessitating a detailed understanding of biases due to extragalactic foregrounds. In the near term, the most significant b…
Upcoming ground-based cosmic microwave background experiments will provide CMB maps with high sensitivity and resolution that can be used for high fidelity lensing reconstruction. However, the sky coverage will be incomplete and the noise highly anisotropic, so optimized estimators are required to extract the most information from the maps. We focus on quadratic-estimator based lensing reconstruction methods that are fast to implement, and compare new more-optimally filtered estimators with various estimators that have previously been used in the literature. Input CMB maps can be optimally inv…
We present a reconstructions of galaxy-cluster-scale mass distributions from simulated gravitational lensing data sets including strong lensing, weak lensing shear, and measurements of quadratic image distortions -- flexion. The lensing data is constructed to make a direct comparison between mass reconstructions with and without flexion. We show that in the absence of flexion measurements, significant galaxy-group scale substructure can remain undetected in the reconstructed mass profiles, and that the resulting profiles underestimate the aperture mass in the substructure regions by $\sim25-40…
We report a mass reconstruction of A1689 using Particle Based Lensing (PBL), a new technique for Strong+Weak lensing that allows a variable resolution depending on the data density and the signal-to-noise. Using PBL we also calculate the covariance matrix for the resulting mass map. The reconstruction of A1689 shows a secondary mass peak in the north-east direction confirming previous optical observations. This indicates that the central region of the cluster is still undergoing a weak merger. We have used this mass map to measure power ratios of the dark matter distribution and compared it to…
We develop a method of reconstructing the lensing field from lensed CMB temperature and polarization maps in real space as an alternative to the harmonic space estimators currently in use by extending an existing real space lensing estimator for temperature to polarization. Real space estimators have the advantage of being local in nature and they are thus equipped to deal with the nonuniform sky coverage, especially galactic cuts and point source excisions, found in experimental data. We characterize some of the properties and limitations of these estimators and test them on simulated maps wi…
We explore the reconstruction of the gravitational lensing field of the cosmic microwave background in real space showing that very little statistical information is lost when estimators of short range on the celestial sphere are used in place of the customary estimators in harmonic space, which are nonlocal and in principle require a simultaneous analysis of the entire sky without any cuts or excisions. Because virtually all the information relevant to lensing reconstruction lies on angular scales close to the resolution scale of the sky map, the gravitational lensing dilatation and shear fie…
We present a new method for constructing three-dimensional mass maps from gravitational lensing shear data. We solve the lensing inversion problem using truncation of singular values (within the context of generalized least squares estimation) without a priori assumptions about the statistical nature of the signal. This singular value framework allows a quantitative comparison between different filtering methods: we evaluate our method beside the previously explored Wiener filter approaches. Our method yields near-optimal angular resolution of the lensing reconstruction and allows cluster size…
CMB and lensing reconstruction power spectra are powerful probes of cosmology. However they are correlated, since the CMB power spectra are lensed and the lensing reconstruction is constructed using CMB multipoles. We perform a full analysis of the auto- and cross-covariances, including polarization power spectra and minimum variance lensing estimators, and compare with simulations of idealized future CMB-S4 observations. Covariances sourced by fluctuations in the unlensed CMB and instrumental noise can largely be removed by using a realization-dependent subtraction of lensing reconstruction n…
Detailed measurements of the CMB lensing signal are an important scientific goal of ongoing ground-based CMB polarization experiments, which are mapping the CMB at high resolution over small patches of the sky. In this work we simulate CMB polarization lensing reconstruction for the $EE$ and $EB$ quadratic estimators with current-generation noise levels and resolution, and show that without boundary effects the known and expected zeroth and first order $N^{(0)}$ and $N^{(1)}$ biases provide an adequate model for non-signal contributions to the lensing power spectrum estimators. Small sky areas…
In the current era of high-precision CMB experiments, the imprint of gravitational lensing on the CMB temperature is exploited as a source of valuable information. Especially the reconstruction of the lensing potential power spectrum is of great interest. The reconstruction from the optimal quadratic estimator of the lensing potential, though, is biased. As long as the intrinsic CMB fluctuations are Gaussian this bias is well understood and controlled. In the presence of non-Gaussian primordial curvature perturbations, however, the CMB also acquires a non-Gaussian structure mimicking the lensi…
We cross correlate the gravitational lensing map extracted from cosmic microwave background measurements by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) with the radio galaxy distribution from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) by using a quadratic estimator technique. We use the full covariance matrix to filter the data, and calculate the cross-power spectra for the lensing-galaxy correlation. We explore the impact of changing the values of cosmological parameters on the lensing reconstruction, and obtain statistical detection significances at $>3σ$. The results of all cross correlations pass …
Measuring weak lensing cosmic magnification signal is very challenging due to the overwhelming intrinsic clustering in the observed galaxy distribution. In this paper, we modify the Internal Linear Combination (ILC) method to reconstruct the lensing signal with an extra constraint to suppress the intrinsic clustering. To quantify the performance, we construct a realistic galaxy catalogue for the LSST-like photometric survey, covering $20\,000\ °^2$ with mean source redshift at $z_s\sim 1$. We find that the reconstruction performance depends on the width of the photo-z bin we choose. Due to the…
Extragalactic foregrounds are known to generate significant biases in temperature-based CMB lensing reconstruction. Several techniques, which include ``source hardening'' and ``shear-only estimators'' have been proposed to mitigate contamination and have been shown to be very effective at reducing foreground-induced biases. Here we extend both techniques to polarization, which will be an essential component of CMB lensing reconstruction for future experiments, and investigate the ``large-lens'' limit analytically to gain insight on the origin and scaling of foreground biases, as well as the se…
We study reconstruction of the lensing potential power spectrum from CMB temperature data, with an eye to the Planck experiment. We work with the optimal quadratic estimator of Okamoto and Hu, which we characterize thoroughly in application to reconstruction of the lensing power spectrum. We find that at multipoles L<250 our current understanding of this estimator is biased at the 15% level by beyond-gradient terms in the Taylor expansion of lensing effects. We present the full lensed trispectrum to fourth order in the lensing potential to explain this effect. We show that the low-L bias, as w…
We consider evidence for deviations from General Relativity (GR) in the growth of large scale structure, using two parameters, $γ$ and $η$, to quantify the modification. We consider the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect (ISW) in the WMAP Cosmic Microwave Background data, the cross-correlation between the ISW and galaxy distributions from 2MASS and SDSS surveys, and the weak lensing shear field from the Hubble Space Telescope's COSMOS survey along with measurements of the cosmic expansion history. We find current data, driven by the COSMOS weak lensing measurements, disfavors GR on cosmic scales, p…
An essential quantity required to understand the physics of the early Universe, in particular the inflationary epoch, is the primordial scalar potential $Φ$ and its statistics. We present for the first time an all-sky reconstruction of $Φ$ with corresponding $1σ$-uncertainty from WMAP's cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature data -- a map of the very early Universe right after the inflationary epoch. This has been achieved by applying a Bayesian inference method that separates the whole inverse problem of the reconstruction into many independent ones, each of them solved by an optimal l…
We compare the efficiency with which 2D and 3D weak lensing mass mapping techniques are able to detect clusters of galaxies using two state-of-the-art mass reconstruction techniques: MRLens in 2D and GLIMPSE in 3D. We simulate otherwise-empty cluster fields for 96 different virial mass-redshift combinations spanning the ranges $3\times10^{13}h^{-1}M_\odot \le M_{vir}\le 10^{15}h^{-1}M_\odot$ and $0.05 \le z_{\rm cl} \le 0.75$, and for each generate 1000 realisations of noisy shear data in 2D and 3D. For each field, we then compute the cluster (false) detection rate as the mean number of cluste…
The power spectrum of reconstructed cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing maps is a powerful tool for constraints on cosmological parameters like the sum of the neutrino masses and the dark energy equation of state. One possible complication is the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, due to the scattering of CMB photons by moving electrons, which can bias the reconstruction of the CMB lensing power spectrum through both kSZ-lensing correlations and the non-Gaussianity of the kSZ temperature anisotropies. We investigate for the first time the bias to CMB lensing reconstruction from t…
Due to the recent growth of discoveries of strong gravitational lensing (SGL) systems, one can statistically study both lens properties and cosmological parameters from 161 galactic scale SGL systems. We analyze meVSL model with the velocity dispersion of lenses by adopting the redshift and surface mass density depending power-law mass model. Analysis shows that meVSL models with various dark energy models including $Λ$CDM, $ω$CDM, and CPL provide the negative values of meVSL parameter, $b$ when we put the prior to the $Ω_{m 0}$ value from Planck. These indicate the faster speed of light and t…
We discuss the effects of inhomogeneous sky-coverage on CMB lens reconstruction, focusing on application to the recently launched Planck satellite. We discuss the mean-field which is induced by noise inhomogeneities, as well as three approaches to lens reconstruction in this context: an optimal maximum-likelihood approach which is computationally expensive to evaluate, and two suboptimal approaches which are less intensive. The first of these is only sub-optimal at the five per-cent level for Planck, and the second prevents biasing due to uncertainties in the noise model.
Precise reconstruction of the cosmic microwave background lensing potential can be achieved with deep polarization surveys by iteratively removing lensing-induced $B$ modes. We introduce a lensing spectrum estimator and its likelihood for such optimal iterative reconstruction. Our modelling share similarities to the state-of-the-art likelihoods for quadratic estimator-based (QE) lensing reconstruction. In particular, we generalize the $N_L^{(0)}$ and $N_L^{(1)}$ lensing biases, and design a realization-dependent spectrum debiaser, making this estimator robust to uncertainties in the data model…
Weak gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is an important cosmological tool that allows us to learn about the structure, composition and evolution of the Universe. Upcoming CMB experiments, such as the Simons Observatory (SO), will provide high-resolution and low-noise CMB measurements. We consider the impact of instrumental systematics on the corresponding high-precision lensing reconstruction power spectrum measurements. We simulate CMB temperature and polarization maps for an SO-like instrument and potential scanning strategy, and explore systematics relating to be…
We present a method to estimate the lensing potential from massive galaxy clusters for given observational X-ray data. The concepts developed and applied in this work can easily be combined with other techniques to infer the lensing potential, e.g. weak gravitational lensing or galaxy kinematics, to obtain an overall best fit model for the lensing potential. After elaborating on the physical details and assumptions the method is based on, we explain how the numerical algorithm itself is implemented with a Richardson-Lucy algorithm as a central part. Our reconstruction method is tested on simul…
Galaxy clusters are considered as excellent probes for cosmology. For that purpose, their mass needs to be measured and their structural properties needs to be understood. We propose a method for galaxy cluster mass reconstruction which combines information from strong lensing, weak lensing shear and flexion. We extend the weak lensing analysis to the inner parts of the cluster and, in particular, improve the resolution of substructure. We use simulations to show that the method recovers the mass density profiles of the cluster. We find that the weak lensing flexion is sensitive to substructur…
We propose an Analytical method of Blind Separation (ABS) of cosmic magnification from the intrinsic fluctuations of galaxy number density in the observed galaxy number density distribution. The ABS method utilizes the different dependences of the signal (cosmic magnification) and contamination (galaxy intrinsic clustering) on galaxy flux, to separate the two. It works directly on the measured cross galaxy angular power spectra between different flux bins. It determines/reconstructs the lensing power spectrum analytically, without assumptions of galaxy intrinsic clustering and cosmology. It is…
Galaxy clusters provide a multitude of observational data across wavelengths and their structure and morphology are of considerable interest in cosmology as well as astrophysics. We develop a framework that allows the combination of lensing and non-lensing observations in a free-form and mesh-free approach to infer the projected mass distribution of individual galaxy clusters. This method can be used to test common assumptions on the morphology of clusters in parametric models. We make use of the lensing reconstruction code SaWLens2 and expand its capabilities by incorporating an estimate of t…
Gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is expected to be amongst the most powerful cosmological tools for ongoing and upcoming CMB experiments. In this work, we investigate a bias to CMB lensing reconstruction from temperature anisotropies due to the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, that is, the Doppler shift of CMB photons induced by Compton-scattering off moving electrons. The kSZ signal yields biases due to both its own intrinsic non-Gaussianity and its non-zero cross-correlation with the CMB lensing field (and other fields that trace the large-scale struct…
We present new constraints on the relativistic neutrino effective number N_eff and on the Cosmic Microwave Background power spectrum lensing amplitude A_L from the recent Planck 2013 data release. Including observations of the CMB large angular scale polarization from the WMAP satellite, we obtain the bounds N_eff = 3.71 +/- 0.40 and A_L = 1.25 +/- 0.13 at 68% c.l.. The Planck dataset alone is therefore suggesting the presence of a dark radiation component at 91.1% c.l. and hinting for a higher power spectrum lensing amplitude at 94.3% c.l.. We discuss the agreement of these results with the p…
We simultaneously constrain cosmology and galaxy bias using measurements of galaxy abundances, galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We use the conditional luminosity function (which describes the halo occupation statistics as function of galaxy luminosity) combined with the halo model (which describes the non-linear matter field in terms of its halo building blocks) to describe the galaxy-dark matter connection. We explicitly account for residual redshift space distortions in the projected galaxy-galaxy correlation functions, and marginalize over…
Over the past decade, the gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has become a powerful tool for probing the matter distribution in the Universe. The standard technique used to reconstruct the CMB lensing signal employs the quadratic estimator (QE) method, which has recently been shown to be suboptimal for lensing measurements on very small scales in temperature and polarization data. We implement a simple, more optimal method for the small-scale regime, which involves taking the direct inverse of the background gradient. We derive new techniques to make continuous maps …
We develop a method for calculating the correlation structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) using Feynman diagrams, when the CMB has been modified by gravitational lensing, Faraday rotation, patchy reionization, or other distorting effects. This method is used to calculate the bias of the Hu-Okamoto quadratic estimator in reconstructing the lensing power spectrum up to O(ϕ^4) in the lensing potential $ϕ$. We consider both the diagonal noise TTTT, EBEB, etc. and, for the first time, the off-diagonal noise TTTE, TBEB, etc. The previously noted large O(ϕ^4) term in the second order noi…
Weak gravitational lensing of the 21 cm radiation is expected to be an important cosmological probe for post-reionization physics. We investigate the reconstruction of the matter density perturbations using a quadratic minimum variance estimator. The next generation of line intensity mapping (LIM) surveys such as HIRAX and CHIME will cover a larger sky fraction, which requires one to account for the curvature in the sky. Thus, we extend the plane-parallel flat-sky formalism for lensing reconstruction to account for a full-sky survey using the Spherical Fourier-Bessel (SFB) expansion. Using the…
We introduce a new estimator of the CMB lensing power spectrum, together with its likelihood, based on iterative lensing reconstruction. Despite the increased complexity of the lensing maps, this estimator shares similarities with the standard quadratic estimator. Most importantly, it is unbiased towards the assumptions done on the noise and cosmology for the lensing reconstruction. This new spectrum estimator can double the constraints on the lensing amplitude compared to the quadratic estimator, while keeping numerical cost under control and being robust to errors.
Gravitational lensing of the CMB is a valuable cosmological signal that correlates to tracers of large-scale structure and acts as a important source of confusion for primordial $B$-mode polarization. State-of-the-art lensing reconstruction analyses use quadratic estimators, which are easily applicable to data. However, these estimators are known to be suboptimal, in particular for polarization, and large improvements are expected to be possible for high signal-to-noise polarization experiments. We develop a method and numerical code, $\rm{LensIt}$, that is able to find efficiently the most pr…
I describe a method to estimate response matrices of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lensing power spectra estimators to the true sky power under realistic conditions. Applicable to all lensing reconstruction pipelines based on quadratic estimators (QE), it uses a small number of Gaussian CMB Monte-Carlos and specially designed QE's in order to obtain sufficiently accurate matrices with little computational effort. This method may be used to improve the modelling of CMB lensing band-powers by incorporating at least some of the non-idealities encountered in CMB lensing reconstruction. These n…
Next generation CMB experiments such as CMB-S4 aim at measuring the CMB lensing potential at sub-percent precision where most of the constraining power will come from CMB polarization. We investigate the prospects of achieving this goal in the presence of large-scale, diffuse galactic foreground emission by using non-Gaussian sky simulations and exploit multi-frequency information to clean those. We show that, while prior to foreground cleaning, cosmological parameter estimates from the contaminated lensing potential estimation can be significantly biased, these can be successfully mitigated b…
Abell 2744, a massive Hubble Frontier Fields merging galaxy cluster with many multiple images in the core has been the subject of many lens inversions using different methods. While most existing studies compare various inversion methods, we focus on a comparison of reconstructions that use different input lensing data. Since the quantity and quality of lensing data is constantly improving, it makes sense to ask if the estimated uncertainties are robust against changes in the data. We address this question using free-form Grale, which takes only image information as input, and nothing pertaini…
The study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lensing potential has established itself by now as a robust way of probing the physics of large-scale structure growth. The most common estimators of the lensing potential are derived under the assumption of Gaussianity of the matter distribution and in the Born approximation of the photon diffusion. In this paper we study the performance of quadratic estimators when applied to realistic sky maps extracted from multiple-lens ray tracing techniques in cosmological $N$-body simulations. These are expected to model accurately the effects due to t…
Lens magnification by galaxy clusters induces characteristic spatial variations in the number counts of background sources, amplifying their observed fluxes and expanding the area of sky, the net effect of which, known as magnification bias, depends on the intrinsic faint-end slope of the source luminosity function. The bias is strongly negative for red galaxies, dominated by the geometric area distortion, whereas it is mildly positive for blue galaxies, enhancing the blue counts toward the cluster center. We generalize the Bayesian approach of Umetsu et al. for reconstructing projected cluste…
