We show that the lensing efficiency of cosmic shear generically has a simple shape, even in the case of a tomographic survey with badly behaved photometric redshifts. We argue that source distributions for cosmic shear can therefore be more effectively parametrised in ``efficiency space''. Using realistic simulations, we find that the true lensing efficiency of a current cosmic shear survey without disconnected outliers in the redshift distributions can be described to per cent accuracy with only two parameters, and the approach straightforwardly generalises to other parametric forms and surveys. The cosmic shear signal is thus largely insensitive to the details of the source distributions, and the features that matter can be summarised by a small number of suitable efficiency parameters. For the simulated survey, we show that prior knowledge at the 10% level, which is attainable e.g. from photometric redshifts, is enough to marginalise over the efficiency parameters without severely affecting the constraints on the cosmology parameters $Ω_m$ and $σ_8$.
The potential of cosmic shear to probe cosmology is well recognized and future optical wide field surveys are currently being designed to optimize the return of cosmic shear science. High precision cosmic shear analysis requires high precision photometric redshift. With accurate photometric redshifts, it becomes possible to measure the cosmic magnification on galaxies by galaxies and use it as a probe of cosmology. This type of weak lensing measurement will not use galaxy shapes, instead it will strongly rely on precise photometry and detailed color information. In this work it is shown that s…
We present a quantitative analysis of the constraints on the total equation of state parameter that can be obtained from measuring the red shift evolution of the cosmic shear. We compare the constraints that can be obtained from measurements of the spin two angular multipole moments of the cosmic shear to those resulting from the two dimensional and three dimensional power spectra of the cosmic shear. We find that if the multipole moments of the cosmic shear are measured accurately enough for a few red shifts the constraints on the dark energy equation of state parameter improve significantly …
We introduce the Generalised Lensing and Shear Spectra GLaSS code which is available for download from https://github.com/astro-informatics/GLaSS It is a fast and flexible public code, written in Python, that computes generalized spherical cosmic shear spectra. The commonly used tomographic and spherical Bessel lensing spectra come as built-in run-mode options. GLaSS is integrated into the Cosmosis modular cosmological pipeline package. We outline several computational choices that accelerate the computation of cosmic shear power spectra. Using GLaSS, we test whether the assumption that using …
We explore a new technique to measure cosmic shear using Einstein rings. In Birrer et al. (2017), we showed that the detailed modelling of Einstein rings can be used to measure external shear to high precision. In this letter, we explore how a collection of Einstein rings can be used as a statistical probe of cosmic shear. We present a forecast of the cosmic shear information available in Einstein rings for different strong lensing survey configurations. We find that, assuming that the number density of Einstein rings in the COSMOS survey is representative, future strong lensing surveys should…
We present a new method, called $x$-cut cosmic shear, which optimally removes sensitivity to poorly modeled scales from the two-point cosmic shear signal. We show that the $x$-cut cosmic shear covariance matrix can be computed from the correlation function covariance matrix in a few minutes, enabling a likelihood analysis at virtually no additional computational cost. Further we show how to generalize $x$-cut cosmic shear to galaxy-galaxy lensing. Performing an $x$-cut cosmic shear analysis of the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 (DESY1) shear data, we reduce the error on $S_8= σ_8 (Ω_m / 0.3) ^ {0.5…
An explicit full nulling scheme for cosmic shear observations is presented. It makes possible the construction of shear maps from extended source distributions for which the lens distance distribution is restricted to a definite interval. Such a construction allows to build totally independent shear maps, at all scales, that can be taken advantage of to constrain background cosmological parameters and systematics using the full statistical power of cosmic shear observations. Another advantage of such construction is that, as the lens redshift distribution can be made arbitrarily narrow, scale …
With the advent of large-scale weak lensing surveys there is a need to understand how realistic, scale-dependent systematics bias cosmic shear and dark energy measurements, and how they can be removed. Here we describe how spatial variations in the amplitude and orientation of realistic image distortions convolve with the measured shear field, mixing the even-parity convergence and odd-parity modes, and bias the shear power spectrum. Many of these biases can be removed by calibration to external data, the survey itself, or by modelling in simulations. The uncertainty in the calibration must be…
We present a new method for joint cosmological parameter inference and cluster mass calibration from a combination of weak lensing measurements and the abundance of thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) selected galaxy clusters. We combine cluster counts with the spherical harmonic cosmic shear power spectrum and the cross-correlation between cluster overdensity and cosmic shear. These correlations constrain the cluster mass-observable relation. We model the observables using a halo model framework, including their full non-Gaussian covariance. Forecasting constraints on cosmological and mass calib…
Constraints on cosmology from recent cosmic shear observations are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their treatment of potential systematic effects. Here we present cosmological constraints which include modelling of intrinsic alignments. We demonstrate how the results are changed for three different intrinsic alignment models, and for two different models of the cosmic shear galaxy population. We find that intrinsic alignments can either reduce or increase measurements of the fluctuation amplitude parameter sigma_8 depending on these decisions, and depending on the cosmic shear survey p…
Only galaxies bright enough and large enough to be unambiguously identified and measured are included in galaxy surveys used to estimate cosmic shear. We demonstrate that because gravitational lensing can scatter galaxies across the brightness and size thresholds, cosmic shear experiments suffer from lensing bias. We calculate the effect on the shear power spectrum and show that - unless corrected for - it will lead analysts to cosmological parameters estimates that are biased at the 2-3σlevel in DETF Stage III experiments, such as the Dark Energy Survey.
Cosmic shear - the weak gravitational lensing effect generated by fluctuations of the gravitational tidal fields of the large-scale structure - is one of the most promising tools for current and future cosmological analyses. The spherical-Bessel decomposition of the cosmic shear field ("3D cosmic shear") is one way to maximise the amount of redshift information in a lensing analysis and therefore provides a powerful tool to investigate in particular the growth of cosmic structure that is crucial for dark energy studies. However, the computation of simulated 3D cosmic shear covariance matrices …
Yes! Upcoming galaxy shear surveys have the potential to significantly improve our understanding of dark energy and neutrino mass if lensing systematics can be sufficiently controlled. The cross-correlations between the weak lensing shear, galaxy number counts from a galaxy redshift survey, and the CMB lensing convergence can be used to calibrate the shear multiplicative bias, one of the most challenging systematics in lensing surveys. These cross-correlations can significantly reduce the deleterious effects of the uncertainties in multiplicative bias.
We present a semi-analytic model for the shear two-point correlation function of a cosmic shear survey with non-uniform depth. Ground-based surveys are subject to depth variations that primarily arise through varying atmospheric conditions. For a survey like the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), we find that the measured depth variation increases the amplitude of the observed shear correlation function at the level of a few percent out to degree-scales, relative to the assumed uniform-depth case. The impact on the inferred cosmological parameters is shown to be insignificant for a KiDS-like survey. F…
We present the optimal convergence and shear estimators for lensing reconstruction from the cosmic microwave background temperature field. This generalizes the deflection estimator, is sensitive to non-lensing modes, provides internal consistency checks, and is always at least as optimal. Previously, these estimators were only known in the squeezed limit. This paper decomposes convergence and shear fields into cosine and sine waves and the lensed correlation function is then Taylor expanded in the wave amplitudes. Maximizing the likelihood function gives the optimal estimators for the converge…
Cosmic shear is the distortion of images of distant galaxies due to weak gravitational lensing by the large-scale structure in the Universe. Such images are coherently deformed by the tidal field of matter inhomogeneities along the line of sight. By measuring galaxy shape correlations, we can study the properties and evolution of structure on large scales as well as the geometry of the Universe. Thus, 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 r…
Exploiting the full statistical power of future cosmic shear surveys will necessitate improvements to the accuracy with which the gravitational lensing signal is measured. We present a framework for calibrating shear with image simulations that demonstrates the importance of including realistic correlations between galaxy morphology, size and more importantly, photometric redshifts. This realism is essential so that selection and shape measurement biases can be calibrated accurately for a tomographic cosmic shear analysis. We emulate Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) observations of the COSMOS field u…
We present an independent cosmic shear analysis of the non-cosmological B-mode distortions within the public first year data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We find no significant detection of B-modes in a full tomographic analysis of the primary METACALIBRATION shear catalogue. This is in contrast to the secondary IM3SHAPE shear catalogue, where we detect B- modes at a significance of $\sim 3σ$ with a pattern that is consistent with the B-mode signature of a repeating additive shear bias across the survey. We use the COSEBIs statistic to cleanly separate the B-modes from the gravitational …
In this paper we derive a full expression for the propagation of multiplicative and additive shape measurement biases into the cosmic shear power spectrum. In doing so we identify several new terms that are associated with selection effects, as well as cross-correlation terms between the multiplicative and additive biases and the shear field. The computation of the resulting bias in the shear power spectrum scales as the fifth power of the maximum multipole considered. Consequently the calculation is unfeasible for large l-modes, and the only tractable way to assess the full impact of shape me…
Here we present a number of improvements to weak lensing 3D power spectrum analysis, 3D cosmic shear, that uses the shape and redshift information of every galaxy to constrain cosmological parameters. We show how photometric redshift probability distributions for individual galaxies can be directly included in this statistic with no averaging. We also include the Limber approximation, considerably simplifying full 3D cosmic shear analysis, and we investigate its range of applicability. Finally we show the relationship between weak lensing tomography and the 3D cosmic shear field itself; the st…
We introduce new Fourier band-power estimators for cosmic shear data analysis and E/B-mode separation. We consider both the case where one performs E/B-mode separation and the case where one does not. The resulting estimators have several nice properties which make them ideal for cosmic shear data analysis. First, they can be written as linear combinations of the binned cosmic shear correlation functions. Second, they account for the survey window function in real-space. Third, they are unbiased by shape noise since they do not use correlation function data at zero separation. Fourth, the band…
In this paper we address the challenge of extracting maps of spatially varying unknown additive biases from cosmic shear data. This is done by exploiting the isotropy of the cosmic shear field, and the anisotropy of a typical additive bias field, using an autocorrelation discrepancy map; which identifies significant non-Gaussian components of the map. We test this approach using simulations and find that the autocorrelation discrepancy map produces spatially varying features that are indicative of the additive bias field both in amplitude and spatial variation. We then apply this to the Dark E…
In this paper we discuss the commonly-used limiting cases, or approximations, for two-point cosmic shear statistics. We discuss the most prominent assumptions in this statistic: the flat-sky (small angle limit), the Limber (Bessel-to-delta function limit) and the Hankel transform (large l-mode limit) approximations; that the vast majority of cosmic shear results to date have used simultaneously. We find that the combined effect of these approximations can suppress power by >1% on scales of l<40. A fully non-approximated cosmic shear study should use a spherical-sky, non-Limber-approximated pow…
We present the integrated 3-point shear correlation function $iζ_{\pm}$ -- a higher-order statistic of the cosmic shear field -- which can be directly estimated in wide-area weak lensing surveys without measuring the full 3-point shear correlation function, making this a practical and complementary tool to 2-point statistics for weak lensing cosmology. We define it as the 1-point aperture mass statistic $M_{\mathrm{ap}}$ measured at different locations on the shear field correlated with the corresponding local 2-point shear correlation function $ξ_{\pm}$. Building upon existing work on the int…
We develop a Bayesian hierarchical modelling approach for cosmic shear power spectrum inference, jointly sampling from the posterior distribution of the cosmic shear field and its (tomographic) power spectra. Inference of the shear power spectrum is a powerful intermediate product for a cosmic shear analysis, since it requires very few model assumptions and can be used to perform inference on a wide range of cosmological models \emph{a posteriori} without loss of information. We show that joint posterior for the shear map and power spectrum can be sampled effectively by Gibbs sampling, iterati…
We show that it is possible to build effective matter density power spectra in tomographic cosmic shear observations that exhibit the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) features once a nulling transformation has been applied to the data. The precision with which the amplitude and position of these features can be reconstructed is quantified in terms of sky coverage, intrinsic shape noise, median source redshift and number density of sources. BAO detection in Euclid or LSST like wide surveys will be possible with a modest signal-to-noise ratio. It would improve dramatically for slightly deepe…
Weak lensing by large scale structure or 'cosmic shear' is a potentially powerful cosmological probe to shed new light on Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Modified Gravity. It is based on the weak distortions induced by large-scale structures on the observed shapes of distant galaxies through gravitational lensing. While the potentials of this purely gravitational effect are great, results from this technique have been hampered because the measurement of this weak effect is difficult and limited by systematics effects. In particular, a demanding step is the measurement of the weak lensing shear fr…
We investigate the extent to which cosmic size magnification may be used to com- plement cosmic shear in weak gravitational lensing surveys, with a view to obtaining high-precision estimates of cosmological parameters. Using simulated galaxy images, we find that size estimation can be an excellent complement, finding that unbiased estimation of the convergence field is possible with galaxies with angular sizes larger than the point-spread function (PSF) and signal-to-noise ratio in excess of 10. The statistical power is similar to, but not quite as good as, cosmic shear, and it is subject to d…
[Abridged] We seek approximations to the cosmic shear covariance that are as easy to use as the common approximations based on normal statistics, but yield more accurate covariance matrices and parameter errors. We derive expressions for the cosmic shear covariance under the assumption that the underlying convergence field follows log-normal statistics. We also derive a simplified version of this log-normal approximation. We use numerical simulations of weak lensing to study how well the normal, log-normal, and simplified log-normal approximations as well as empirical corrections to the normal…
We use a range of cosmological data to constrain phenomenological modifications to general relativity on cosmological scales, through modifications to the Poisson and lensing equations. We include cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements from the Planck satellite, cosmic shear from CFHTLenS and DES-SV, and redshift-space distortions from BOSS data release 12 and the 6dF galaxy survey. We find no evidence of departures from general relativity, with the modified gravity parameters constrained to $Σ_0 = 0.05^{+0.05}_{-0.07}$ and $μ_0 = -0.10^{+0.20}_{-0.16}$, where $Σ_0$ and $μ_0$ refe…
In this work I study the problem of E/B-mode separation with binned cosmic shear two-point correlation function data. Motivated by previous work on E/B-mode separation with shear two-point correlation functions and the practical considerations of data analysis, I consider E/B-mode estimators which are linear combinations of the binned shear correlation function data points. I demonstrate that these estimators mix E- and B-modes generally. I then show how to define estimators which minimize this E/B-mode mixing and give practical recipes for their construction and use. Using these optimal estim…
We present the first "clipped" cosmic shear measurement using data from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-450). "Clipping" transformations suppress the signal from the highest density, non-linear regions of cosmological fields. We demonstrate that these transformations improve constraints on $S_8=σ_8(Ω_{\rm{m}}/0.3)^{0.5}$ when used in combination with conventional two-point statistics. For the KiDS-450 data, we find that the combined measurements improve the constraints on $S_8$ by 17%, compared to shear correlation functions alone. We determine the expectation value of the clipped shear correlati…
Cosmic Shear in Effective Field Theory at Two-Loop Order: Revisiting $S_8$ in Dark Energy Survey Data
Columbia University（哥伦比亚大学）；NASA Hubble Fellowship Program（NASA哈勃学者计划）；Brookhaven National Laboratory（布鲁克海文国家实验室）；Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Center for Theoretical Physics – a Leinweber Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院莱因韦伯理论物理中心）；The NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions（NSF人工智能基础相互作用研究所）；Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stanford（斯坦福大学莱因韦伯理论物理研究所）；Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology（卡弗里粒子天体物理学与宇宙学研究所）
In this paper we revisit potential biases in cosmic shear power spectra caused by bias terms that multiply up to quadratic powers of the shear. Expanding the multiplicative bias field as a series of independent spin-$s$ fields we find terms $m_s$ that multiply integer and half-integer powers of the shear. We propagate these biases into shape measurement statistics and the cosmic shear power spectrum. We find that such biases can be measured by performing regression on calibration data. We find that for integer powers of shear the impact of quadratic order terms on the power spectrum is an addi…
Cosmic shear has been identified as the method with the most potential to constrain dark energy. To capitalise on this potential it is necessary to measure galaxy shapes with great accuracy, which in turn requires a detailed model for the image blurring, the Point Spread Function (PSF). In general the PSF varies with wavelength and therefore the PSF integrated over an observing filter depends on the spectrum of the object. For a typical galaxy the spectrum varies across the galaxy image, thus the PSF depends on the position within the image. We estimate the bias on the shear due to such colour…
We demonstrate that the intrinsic alignment of galaxies with large-scale tidal fields sources an extra contribution to the recently-detected cross-correlation of galaxy shear and weak lensing of the microwave background. The extra term is the analogy of the 'GI' term in standard cosmic shear studies, and results in a reduction in the amplitude of the cross-correlation. We compute the intrinsic alignment contribution in linear and non-linear theory, and show that it can be at roughly the 15% level for the CFHT Stripe 82 redshift distribution, if the canonical amplitude of intrinsic alignments i…
As observational evidence increasingly consolidates the case for a cosmological constant being the source of the Universe's accelerated expansion, the question whether, and if so, how well, future experiments could detect deviations from this standard scenario is raised with urgency. Assuming a dark energy component different from a cosmological constant, the observable effects in general include gravitational clustering described by the fluid's (rest-frame) speed of sound. We employ 3d weak cosmic shear, a proposed method to take advantage of the full three-dimensional information inherent to…
We present a new method that deals with the uncertainty in matter-clustering in cosmic shear power spectrum analysis that arises mainly due to poorly understood nonlinear baryonic processes on small-scales. We show that the majority of information about dark energy physics contained in the shear power comes from these small-scales; removing these nonlinear scales from a cosmic shear analysis results in a 50% cut in the accuracy of measurements of dark energy parameters, marginalizing over all other parameters. In this paper we propose a method to recover the information on small-scales by allo…
In order to study if the anisotropy of the spacetime may induce differences in the cosmic shear or in deceleration parameter we investigate in Bianchi I Universe the most general expression for the cosmic shear and we study the connections between deceleration parameter and cosmic shear. We also consider a shear parametric approach to measure the transition from decelerating to an accelerating Universe. We also study the connection between jerk parameter and ellipsoidal Universe.
Cosmic flexion, like cosmic shear, is a correlation function whose signal originates from the large-scale structure of the universe. Building on the observational success of cosmic shear, along with the unprecedented quality of large-scale cosmological datasets, the time is ripe to explore the practical constraints from cosmic flexion. Unlike cosmic shear, which has a broad window function for power, cosmic flexion is only measurable on small scales and therefore can uniquely place constraints on the small-scale matter power spectrum. Here, we present a full theoretical formalism for cosmic fl…
Weak lensing has become an increasingly important tool in cosmology and the use of galaxy shapes to measure cosmic shear has become routine. The weak-lensing distortion tensor contains two other effects in addition to the two components of shear: the convergence and rotation. The rotation mode is not measurable using the standard cosmic shear estimators based on galaxy shapes, as there is no information on the original shapes of the images before they were lensed. Due to this, no estimator has been proposed for the rotation mode in cosmological weak-lensing surveys, and the rotation mode has n…
This paper presents a general formalism that allows the derivation of the cumulant generating function and one-point Probability Distribution Function (PDF) of the aperture mass ($\hat{M}_{ap}$), a common observable for cosmic shear observations. Our formalism is based on the Large Deviation Principle (LDP) applied, in such cosmological context, to an arbitrary set of densities in concentric cells. We show here that the LDP can indeed be used for a much larger family of observables than previously envisioned, such as those built from continuous and nonlinear functionals of the density profiles…
I present a new technique for the measurement of the growth of cosmic structures via the power spectrum of weak lensing cosmic shear. It is based on a template-fitting approach, where a redshift-dependent amplitude of lensing modulates a fixed template power spectrum. Such an amplitude, which is promoted to a free parameter and fit against tomographic cosmic shear data, reads $D(z)\,σ_8\,Ω_{{\rm m},0}=:Ωσ_8(z)$, with $D(z)$ the growth factor, $σ_8$ a proxy for the overall amplitude of the matter power spectrum, and $Ω_{{\rm m},0}$ the present-day matter abundance. I show that this method is ab…
We study the possibility of using quadrupole moments of auto-convolved galaxy images to measure cosmic shear. The autoconvolution of an image corresponds to the inverse Fourier transformation of its power spectrum. The new method has the following advantages: the smearing effect due to the Point Spread Function (PSF) can be corrected by subtracting the quadrupole moments of the auto-convolved PSF; the centroid of the auto-convolved image is trivially identified; the systematic error due to noise can be directly removed in Fourier space; the PSF image can also contain noise, the effect of which…
We identify and study a previously unknown systematic effect on cosmic shear measurements, caused by the selection of galaxies used for shape measurement, in particular the rejection of close (blended) galaxy pairs. We use ray-tracing simulations based on the Millennium Simulation and a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation to create realistic galaxy catalogues. From these, we quantify the bias in the shear correlation functions by comparing measurements made from galaxy catalogues with and without removal of close pairs. A likelihood analysis is used to quantify the resulting shift in est…
We present the first calculation of the cross-correlation between three-dimensional cosmic shear and the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (iSW) effect. Both signals are combined in a single formalism, which permits the computation of the full covariance matrix. In order to avoid the uncertainties presented by the non-linear evolution of the matter power spectrum and intrinsic alignments of galaxies, our analysis is restricted to large scales, i.e. multipoles below l=1000. We demonstrate in a Fisher analysis that this reduction compared to other studies of three-dimensional weak lensing extending to smal…
Cosmic shear is a powerful method to constrain cosmology, provided that any systematic effects are under control. The intrinsic alignment of galaxies is expected to severely bias parameter estimates if not taken into account. We explore the potential of a joint analysis of tomographic galaxy ellipticity, galaxy number density, and ellipticity-number density cross-correlations to simultaneously constrain cosmology and self-calibrate unknown intrinsic alignment and galaxy bias contributions. We treat intrinsic alignments and galaxy biasing as free functions of scale and redshift and marginalise …
In this paper we address the problem of finding optimal cosmic shear tomographic bins. We generalise the definition of a cosmic shear tomographic bin to be a set of commonly labelled voxels in photometric colour space; rather than bins defined directly in redshift. We explore this approach by using a self-organising map to define the multi-dimensional colour space, and a we define a 'label space' of connected regions on the self-organising map using overlapping elliptical disks. This allows us to then find optimal labelling schemes by searching the label space. We use a metric that is the sign…
We measure the cosmic shear power spectrum on large angular scales by cross-correlating the shapes of ~9 million galaxies measured in the optical SDSS survey with the shapes of ~2.7x10^5 radio galaxies measured by the overlapping VLA-FIRST survey. Our measurements span the multipole range 10 < l < 130, corresponding to angular scales 2deg < θ < 20deg. On these scales, the shear maps from both surveys suffer from significant systematic effects that prohibit a measurement of the shear power spectrum from either survey alone. Conversely we demonstrate that a power spectrum measured by cross-corre…
The precision of Stage IV cosmic shear surveys will enable us to probe smaller physical scales than ever before, however, model uncertainties from baryonic physics and non-linear structure formation will become a significant concern. The $k$-cut method -- applying a redshift-dependent $\ell$-cut after making the Bernardeau-Nishimichi-Taruya transform -- can reduce sensitivity to baryonic physics; allowing Stage IV surveys to include information from increasingly higher $\ell$-modes. Here we address the question of whether it can also mitigate the impact of making the reduced shear approximatio…
Cosmic shear is considered one of the most powerful methods for studying the properties of Dark Energy in the Universe. As a standard method, the two-point correlation functions $xi_\pm(theta)$ of the cosmic shear field are used as statistical measures for the shear field. In order to separate the observed shear into E- and B-modes, the latter being most likely produced by remaining systematics in the data set and/or intrinsic alignment effects, several statistics have been defined before. Here we aim at a complete E-/B-mode decomposition of the cosmic shear information contained in the $xi_\p…
Data re-sampling methods such as the delete-one jackknife are a common tool for estimating the covariance of large scale structure probes. In this paper we investigate the concepts of internal covariance estimation in the context of cosmic shear two-point statistics. We demonstrate how to use log-normal simulations of the convergence field and the corresponding shear field to carry out realistic tests of internal covariance estimators and find that most estimators such as jackknife or sub-sample covariance can reach a satisfactory compromise between bias and variance of the estimated covarianc…
We describe a new method for reducing the shape noise in weak lensing measurements by an order of magnitude. Our method relies on spectroscopic measurements of disk galaxy rotation and makes use of the Tully-Fisher relation in order to control for the intrinsic orientations of galaxy disks. For this new proposed method, so-called Kinematic Lensing (KL), the shape noise ceases to be an important source of statistical error. We use the CosmoLike software package to simulate likelihood analyses for two Kinematic Lensing survey concepts (roughly similar in scale to Dark Energy Survey Task Force St…
We compute the spherical-sky weak-lensing power spectrum of the shear and convergence. We discuss various approximations, such as flat-sky, and first- and second- order Limber equations for the projection. We find that the impact of adopting these approximations is negligible when constraining cosmological parameters from current weak lensing surveys. This is demonstrated using data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS). We find that the reported tension with Planck Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy results cannot be alleviated. For future lar…
Commonly used methods to decompose E- and B-modes in cosmic shear, namely the aperture mass dispersion and the E/B-mode shear correlation function, suffer from incomplete knowledge of the two-point correlation function (2PCF) on very small and/or very large scales. The ring statistics, the most recently developed cosmic shear measure, improves on this issue and is able to decompose E- and B-modes using a 2PCF measured on a finite interval. First, we improve on the ring statistics' filter function with respect to the signal-to-noise ratio. Second, we examine the ability of the ring statistics t…
Thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) power spectrum is a powerful probe of the present-day amplitude of matter density fluctuations, and has been measured up to $\ell\approx 10^3$ from the {\it Planck} data. The largest systematic uncertainty in the interpretation of this data is the so-called "mass bias" parameter $B$, which relates the true halo mass to the mass proxy used by the {\it Planck} team as $M_{\rm 500c}^{Planck}=M_{\rm 500c}^{\rm true}/B$. Since the power spectrum of the cosmic weak lensing shear is also sensitive to the amplitude of matter density fluctuations via $S_8\equiv σ_8 Ω_m^α…
