English

Cosmological constraints from the convergence 1-point probability distribution

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2017-09-20 v1

Abstract

We examine the cosmological information available from the 1-point probability distribution (PDF) of the weak-lensing convergence field, utilizing fast L-PICOLA simulations and a Fisher analysis. We find competitive constraints in the Ωm\Omega_m-σ8\sigma_8 plane from the convergence PDF with 188 arcmin2188\ arcmin^2 pixels compared to the cosmic shear power spectrum with an equivalent number of modes (<886\ell < 886). The convergence PDF also partially breaks the degeneracy cosmic shear exhibits in that parameter space. A joint analysis of the convergence PDF and shear 2-point function also reduces the impact of shape measurement systematics, to which the PDF is less susceptible, and improves the total figure of merit by a factor of 232-3, depending on the level of systematics. Finally, we present a correction factor necessary for calculating the unbiased Fisher information from finite differences using a limited number of cosmological simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.01486,
  title  = {Cosmological constraints from the convergence 1-point probability distribution},
  author = {Kenneth Patton and Jonathan Blazek and Klaus Honscheid and Eric Huff and Peter Melchior and Ashley J. Ross and Eric Suchyta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.01486},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:42:33.927Z