Measuring the Geometry of the Universe from Weak Gravitational Lensing behind Galaxy Groups in the HST COSMOS survey
James E. Taylor, Richard J. Massey, Alexie Leauthaud, Matthew R. George, Jason Rhodes, Thomas D. Kitching, Peter Capak, Richard Ellis, Alexis Finoguenov, Olivie… 展开作者
James E. Taylor, Richard J. Massey, Alexie Leauthaud, Matthew R. George, Jason Rhodes, Thomas D. Kitching, Peter Capak, Richard Ellis, Alexis Finoguenov, Olivier Ilbert, Eric Jullo, Jean-Paul Kneib, Anton M. Koekemoer, Nick Scoville, Masayuki Tanaka
Gravitational lensing can provide pure geometric tests of the structure of space-time, for instance by determining empirically the angular diameter distance-redshift relation. This geometric test has been demonstrated several times using massive clusters which produce a large lensing signal. In this case, matter at a single redshift dominates the lensing signal, so the analysis is straightforward. It is less clear how weaker signals from multiple sources at different redshifts can be stacked to demonstrate the geometric dependence. We introduce a simple measure of relative shear which for flat cosmologies separates the effect of lens and source positions into multiplicative terms, allowing signals from many different source-lens pairs to be combined. Applying this technique to a sample of groups and low-mass clusters in the COSMOS survey, we detect a clear variation of shear with distance behind the lens. This represents the first detection of the geometric effect using weak lensing by multiple, low-mass systems. The variation of distance with redshift is measured with sufficient precision to constrain the equation of state of the universe under the assumption of flatness, equivalent to a detection of a dark energy component Omega_X at greater than 99% confidence for an equation-of-state parameter -2.5 < w < -0.1. For the case w = -1, we find a value for the cosmological constant density parameter Omega_Lambda = 0.85+0.044-0.19 (68% C.L.), and detect cosmic acceleration (q_0 < 0) at the 98% C.L.. We consider the systematic uncertainties associated with this technique and discuss the prospects for applying it in forthcoming weak-lensing surveys.
We present a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) weak gravitational lensing study of nine distant and massive galaxy clusters with redshifts $1.0 \lesssim z \lesssim 1.7$ ($z_\mathrm{median} = 1.4$) and Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SZ) detection significance $ξ> 6.0$ from the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. We measured weak lensing galaxy shapes in HST/ACS F606W and F814W images and used additional observations from HST/WFC3 in F110W and VLT/FORS2 in $U_\mathrm{HIGH}$ to preferentially select background galaxies at $z\gtrsim 1.8$, achieving a high purity. We combined recent redshift e…
We study the shape of eight dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters observed with the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Using strong and weak gravitational lensing, the shape of the Brightest Cluster Galaxy and the X-ray isophote we study the ellipticity of the cluster halo at four different radii. We find that the proxies probing the inner regions of the cluster are strongly coupled with the BCG shape correlated with both the shape predicted by strong gravitational lensing and the X-ray isophote. Conversely we find no such correlation between the shape as predicted by the weak…
Accurate weak lensing mass estimates of clusters are needed in order to calibrate mass proxies for the cosmological exploitation of galaxy cluster surveys. Such measurements require accurate knowledge of the redshift distribution of the weak lensing source galaxies. In this context, we investigate the accuracy of photometric redshifts (photo-$z$s) computed by the 3D-HST team for the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey fields, which provide a relevant photometric reference data set for deep weak lensing studies. Through the comparison to spectroscopic redshifts and ph…
We have searched 4.5 square degrees of archival HST/ACS images for cosmic strings, identifying close pairs of similar, faint galaxies and selecting groups whose alignment is consistent with gravitational lensing by a long, straight string. We find no evidence for cosmic strings in five large-area HST treasury surveys (covering a total of 2.22 square degrees), or in any of 346 multi-filter guest observer images (1.18 square degrees). Assuming that simulations ccurately predict the number of cosmic strings in the universe, this non-detection allows us to place upper limits on the unitless Univer…
Observations of relaxed, massive and distant clusters can provide important tests of standard cosmological models e.g. using the gas mass fraction. We study the very luminous, high redshift ($z=0.902$) galaxy cluster ClJ120958.9+495352 using XMM-Newton data and measure the temperature profile and cooling time to investigate the dynamical status with respect to the presence of a cool core as well as global cluster properties. We use HST weak lensing data to estimate its total mass and determine the gas mass fraction. We perform a spectral analysis using an XMM-Newton observation of 15ks cleaned…
We examine the inner mass distribution of the relaxed galaxy cluster Abell 383 in deep 16-band HST/ACS+WFC3 imaging taken as part of the CLASH multi-cycle treasury program. Our program is designed to study the dark matter distribution in 25 massive clusters, and balances depth with a wide wavelength coverage to better identify lensed systems and generate precise photometric redshifts. This information together with the predictive strength of our strong-lensing analysis method identifies 13 new multiply-lensed images and candidates, so that a total of 27 multiple-images of 9 systems are used to…
On 2022 July 8, NASA shared$^{a}$ the list of five public showcase targets which have been observed with the new \textit{James Webb Space Telescope} (JWST), and whose data are expected to be released to the public around Tuesday, July 12. One of these targets is the galaxy cluster SMACS~J0723.3-7327 which acts as a gravitational lens and was recently imaged with the \textit{Hubble Space Telescope} in the framework of the \textit{Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey} program (RELICS). To facilitate studies by the community with the upcoming JWST data, we publish here a lens model for SMACS0723 -…
We present weak gravitational lensing analysis of 22 high-redshift (z >~1) clusters based on Hubble Space Telescope images. Most clusters in our sample provide significant lensing signals and are well detected in their reconstructed two-dimensional mass maps. Combining the current results and our previous weak-lensing studies of five other high-z clusters, we compare gravitational lensing masses of these clusters with other observables. We revisit the question whether the presence of the most massive clusters in our sample is in tension with the current LambdaCDM structure formation paradigm. …
We present the first measurement of individual cluster mass estimates using weak lensing size and flux magnification. Using data from the HST-STAGES survey of the A901/902 supercluster we detect the four known groups in the supercluster at high significance using magnification alone. We discuss the application of a fully Bayesian inference analysis, and investigate a broad range of potential systematics in the application of the method. We compare our results to a previous weak lensing shear analysis of the same field finding the recovered signal-to-noise of our magnification-only analysis to …
We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS and WFC3 observations of SDSS J1029+2623, a three-image quasar lens system produced by a foreground cluster at z=0.584. Our strong lensing analysis reveals 6 additional multiply imaged galaxies. We confirm the complex nature of the mass distribution of the lensing cluster, with a bimodal distribution which deviates from the Chandra X-ray SB distribution. The Einstein radius is estimated to be θ_E=15.2" \pm 0.5" for the quasar redshift of z=2.197. We derive a radial mass distribution from the combination of strong lensing, HST/ACS weak lensing, and Su…
Upcoming weak lensing surveys will survey large cosmological volumes to measure the growth of cosmological structure with time and thereby constrain dark energy. One major systematic uncertainty in this process is the calibration of the weak lensing shape distortions, or shears. Most upcoming surveys plan to test several aspects of their shear estimation algorithms using sophisticated image simulations that include realistic galaxy populations based on high-resolution data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). However, existing datasets from the (HST) cover very small cosmological volumes, so…
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…
The weak lensing effect on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) induces distortions in spatial pattern of CMB anisotropies, and statistical properties of CMB anisotropies become a weakly non-Gaussian field. We first summarize the weak lensing effect on the CMB (CMB lensing) in the presence of scalar, vector and tensor perturbations. Then we focus on the lensing effect on CMB statistics and methods to estimate deflection angles and their power spectrum. We end by summarizing recent observational progress and future prospect.
Doppler lensing is the apparent change in object size and magnitude due to peculiar velocities. Objects falling into an overdensity appear larger on its near side, and smaller on its far side, than typical objects at the same redshifts. This effect dominates over the usual gravitational lensing magnification at low redshift. Doppler lensing is a promising new probe of cosmology, and we explore in detail how to utilize the effect with forthcoming surveys. We present cosmological simulations of the Doppler and gravitational lensing effects based on the Millennium simulation. We show that Doppler…
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…
Cosmological weak lensing is the powerful probe of cosmology. Here we address one of the most fundamental, statistical questions inherent in weak lensing cosmology: whether or not we can recover the initial Gaussian information content of large-scale structure by combining the weak lensing observables, here focused on the weak lensing power spectrum and bispectrum. To address this question we fully take into account correlations between the power spectra of different multipoles and the bispectra of different triangle configurations, measured from a finite area survey. In particular we show tha…
In recent years cross correlation of lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with other large scale structure (LSS) tracers has been used as a method to detect CMB lensing. Current experiments are also becoming sensitive enough to measure CMB lensing without the help of auxiliary tracers. As data quality improves rapidly, it has been suggested that the CMB lensing-LSS cross correlation may provide new insights into parameters describing cosmological structure growth. In this work we perform forecasts that combine the lensing potential auto power spectrum from various future CMB experi…
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 $44\%$, $11\%$,…
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 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…
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…
We present weak lensing data from the HST/STAGES survey to study the three-dimensional spatial distribution of matter and galaxies in the Abell 901/902 supercluster complex. Our method improves over the existing 3D lensing mapping techniques by calibrating and removing redshift bias and accounting for the effects of the radial elongation of 3D structures. We also include the first detailed noise analysis of a 3D lensing map, showing that even with deep HST quality data, only the most massive structures, for example M200>~10^15 Msun/h at z~0.8, can be resolved in 3D with any reasonable redshift…
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 …
Expanding from previous work we present weak lensing measurements for a total sample of 30 distant ($z_\mathrm{median}=0.93$) massive galaxy clusters from the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) Survey, measuring galaxy shapes in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys images. We remove cluster members and preferentially select $z\gtrsim 1.4$ background galaxies via $V-I$ colour, employing deep photometry from VLT/FORS2 and Gemini-South/GMOS. We apply revised calibrations for the weak lensing shape measurements and the source redshift distribution to estimate the …
Observables such as the luminosity function of galaxies, Φ(M), the projected clustering of galaxies, w_p(r_p), and the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal, ΔΣ, are often measured from galaxy redshift surveys assuming a fiducial cosmological model for calculating distances to and between galaxies. There is a growing number of studies that perform joint analyses of these measurements and constrain cosmological parameters. We quantify the amount by which such measurements systematically vary as the fiducial cosmology used for the measurements is changed, and show that these effects can be significant at…
The observed acceleration of the universe, explained through dark energy, could alternatively be explained through a modification of gravity that would also induce modifications in the evolution of cosmological perturbations. We use new weak lensing data from the COSMOS survey to test for deviations from General Relativity. The departure from GR is parametrized in a model-independent way that consistently parametrizes the two-point cosmic shear amplitude and growth. Using CMB priors, we perform a likelihood analysis. We find constraints on the amplitude of the signal that do not indicate a dev…
We report the discovery of a multiply lensed Ly Alpha (Lya) emitter at z = 3.90 behind the massive galaxy cluster WARPS J1415.1+3612 at z = 1.026. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope(HST) using ACS reveal a complex lensing system that produces a prominent, highly magnified arc and a triplet of smaller arcs grouped tightly around a spectroscopically confirmed cluster member. Spectroscopic observations using FOCAS on Subaru confirm strong Lya emission in the source galaxy and provide redshifts for more than 21 cluster members, from which we obtain a velocity dispersion of 807+/-185 km/s. …
In this work, we propose a new strategy for the pixel-lensing observation of M87 in the Virgo cluster using the {\it Hubble Space Telescope} (HST). In contrast to the previous observational strategy by Baltz et al., we show that a few days intensive observation with the duration of $\sim 90 $min in each HST orbit will increase the observational efficiency of the high-magnification events by more than one order of magnitude. We perform a Monte-Carlo simulation for this strategy and we show that the number of high magnification microlensing events will increase at the rate of 4.2 event per day w…
We present a combined cosmic shear analysis of the modeling of line-of-sight distortions on strongly lensed extended arcs and galaxy shape measurements in the COSMOS field. We develop a framework to predict the covariance of strong lensing and galaxy shape measurements of cosmic shear on the basis of the small scale matter power-spectrum. The weak lensing measurement is performed using data from the COSMOS survey calibrated with a cloning scheme using the Ultra Fast Image Generator UFig (Berge 2013). The strong lensing analysis is performed by forward modeling the lensing arcs with a main lens…
We present a tomographic cosmological weak lensing analysis of the HST COSMOS Survey. Applying our lensing-optimized data reduction, principal component interpolation for the ACS PSF, and improved modelling of charge-transfer inefficiency, we measure a lensing signal which is consistent with pure gravitational modes and no significant shape systematics. We carefully estimate the statistical uncertainty from simulated COSMOS-like fields obtained from ray-tracing through the Millennium Simulation. We test our pipeline on simulated space-based data, recalibrate non-linear power spectrum correctio…
Weak gravitational lensing provides a unique method to map directly the dark matter in the Universe. The majority of lensing analyses uses the two-point statistics of the cosmic shear field to constrain the cosmological model yielding degeneracies, such as that between sigma_8 and Omega_M respectively the r.m.s. of the mass fluctuations at a scale of 8 Mpc/h and the matter density parameter both at z = 0. However, the two-point statistics only measure the Gaussian properties of the field and the weak lensing field is non-Gaussian. It has been shown that the estimation of non-Gaussian statistic…
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…
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…
Accurate shape measurements are essential to infer cosmological parameters from large area weak gravitational lensing studies. The compact diffraction-limited point-spread function (PSF) in space-based observations is greatly beneficial, but its chromaticity for a broad band observation can lead to new subtle effects that could hitherto be ignored: the PSF of a galaxy is no longer uniquely defined and spatial variations in the colours of galaxies result in biases in the inferred lensing signal. Taking Euclid as a reference, we show that this colourgradient bias (CG bias) can be quantified with…
The nature of the dark sector of the Universe remains one of the outstanding problems in modern cosmology, with the search for new observational probes guiding the development of the next generation of observational facilities. Clues come from tension between the predictions from ΛCDM and observations of gravitationally lensed galaxies. Previous studies showed that galaxy clusters in the ΛCDM are not strong enough to reproduce the observed number of lensed arcs. This work aims to constrain the warm dark matter cosmologies by means of the lensing efficiency of galaxy clusters drawn from these a…
We present an HST/ACS weak gravitational lensing analysis of 13 massive high-redshift (z_median=0.88) galaxy clusters discovered in the South Pole Telescope (SPT) Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Survey. This study is part of a larger campaign that aims to robustly calibrate mass-observable scaling relations over a wide range in redshift to enable improved cosmological constraints from the SPT cluster sample. We introduce new strategies to ensure that systematics in the lensing analysis do not degrade constraints on cluster scaling relations significantly. First, we efficiently remove cluster members from t…
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…
We investigate the expected cosmological constraints from a combination of weak lensing and large-scale galaxy clustering using realistic redshift distributions. Introducing a systematic bias in the weak lensing redshift distributions (of 0.05 in redshift) produces a $>2σ$ bias in the recovered matter power spectrum amplitude and dark energy equation of state, for preliminary Stage III surveys. We demonstrate that these cosmological errors can be largely removed by marginalising over unknown biases in the assumed weak lensing redshift distributions, if we assume high quality redshift informati…
Current theories of structure formation predict specific density profiles of galaxy dark matter haloes, and with weak gravitational lensing we can probe these profiles on several scales. On small scales, higher-order shape distortions known as flexion add significant detail to the weak lensing measurements. We present here the first detection of a galaxy-galaxy flexion signal in space-based data, obtained using a new Shapelets pipeline introduced here. We combine this higher-order lensing signal with shear to constrain the average density profile of the galaxy lenses in the Hubble Space Telesc…
Ongoing and future wide-field galaxy surveys can be used to locate a number of clusters of galaxies with cosmic shear measurement alone. We study constraints on cosmological models using statistics of weak lensing selected galaxy clusters. We extend our previous theoretical framework to model the statistical properties of clusters in variants of cosmological models as well as in the standard $Λ$CDM model. Weak lensing selection of clusters does not rely on the conventional assumption such as the relation between luminosity and mass and/or hydrostatic equilibrium, but a number of observational …
Cross-correlations between the galaxy number density in a lensing source sample and that in an overlapping spectroscopic sample can in principle be used to calibrate the lensing source redshift distribution. In this paper, we study in detail to what extent this cross-correlation method can mitigate loss of cosmological information in upcoming weak lensing surveys (combined with a CMB prior) due to lack of knowledge of the source distribution. We consider a scenario where photometric redshifts are available, and find that, unless the photometric redshift distribution p(z_{ph}|z) is calibrated v…
We take advantage of gravitational lensing amplification by Abell 1689 (z=0.187) to undertake the first space-based census of emission line galaxies (ELGs) in the field of a massive lensing cluster. Forty-three ELGs are identified to a flux of i_775=27.3 via slitless grism spectroscopy. One ELG (at z=0.7895) is very bright owing to lensing magnification by a factor of ~4.5. Several Balmer emission lines detected from ground-based follow-up spectroscopy signal the onset of a major starburst for this low-mass galaxy (M_* = 2 x 10^9 solar masses) with a high specific star formation rate (~20 /Gyr…
The amplitude of weak lensing should increase with source distance, rising steeply behind a lens and saturating at high redshift, providing a model-independent means of measuring cosmic geometry. We measure the amplitude of weak lensing with redshift for three massive clusters, A370 (z=0.375), ZwCl0024+17 (z=0.395) and RXJ1347-11 (z=0.451), using deep, three-colour Subaru imaging. We define the depth of lensed populations with reference to the COSMOS and GOODS fields, providing a consistency check of photo-z estimates over a wide range of redshift and magnitude. The predicted distance-redshift…
Joint HST, VLT/MUSE and XMM-Newton observations to constrain the mass distribution of the two strong lensing galaxy clusters: MACS J0242.5-2132 & MACS J0949.8+1708
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…
Strong lensing has developed into an important astrophysical tool for probing both cosmology and galaxies (their structure, formation, and evolution). Using the gravitational lensing theory and cluster mass distribution model, we try to collect a relatively complete observational data concerning the Hubble constant independent ratio between two angular diameter distances $D_{ds}/D_s$ from various large systematic gravitational lens surveys and lensing by galaxy clusters combined with X-ray observations, and check the possibility to use it in the future as complementary to other cosmological pr…
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…
Extending over three Hubble Space Telescope (HST) cycles, the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) initiative constitutes the largest commitment ever of HST time to the exploration of the distant Universe via gravitational lensing by massive galaxy clusters. We here present models of the mass distribution in the six HFF cluster lenses, derived from a joint strong- and weak-lensing analysis anchored by a total of 88 multiple-image systems identified in existing HST data. The resulting maps of the projected mass distribution and of the gravitational magnification effectively calibrate the HFF clusters a…
The gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by inspiraling binary black holes, expected to be detected by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), could be used to determine the luminosity distance to these sources with the unprecedented precision of <~ 1%. We study cosmological parameter constraints from such standard sirens, in the presence of gravitational lensing by large-scale structure. Lensing introduces magnification with a probability distribution function (PDF) whose shape is highly skewed and depends on cosmological parameters. We use Monte-Carlo simulations to generate mock samples…
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…
This is the fourth in a series of papers studying the astrophysics and cosmology of massive, dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters. Here, we use measurements of weak gravitational lensing from the Weighing the Giants project to calibrate Chandra X-ray measurements of total mass that rely on the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium. This comparison of X-ray and lensing masses provides a measurement of the combined bias of X-ray hydrostatic masses due to both astrophysical and instrumental sources. Assuming a fixed cosmology, and within a characteristic radius (r_2500) determined from the X-ray d…
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…
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…
