English

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Cosmological constraints from second and third-order shear statistics

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-01-12 v2

Abstract

We present a cosmological analysis of the third-order aperture mass statistic using Dark Energy Survey Year 3 (DES Y3) data. We perform a complete tomographic measurement of the three-point correlation function of the Y3 weak lensing shape catalog with the four fiducial source redshift bins. Building upon our companion methodology paper, we apply a pipeline that combines the two-point function ξ±\xi_{\pm} with the mass aperture skewness statistic Map3\langle M_{\rm ap}^3\rangle, which is an efficient compression of the full shear three-point function. We use a suite of simulated shear maps to obtain a joint covariance matrix. By jointly analyzing ξ±\xi_\pm and Map3\langle M_{\rm ap}^3\rangle measured from DES Y3 data with a Λ\LambdaCDM model, we find S8=0.780±0.015S_8=0.780\pm0.015 and Ωm=0.2660.040+0.039\Omega_{\rm m}=0.266^{+0.039}_{-0.040}, yielding 111% of figure-of-merit improvement in Ωm\Omega_m-S8S_8 plane relative to ξ±\xi_{\pm} alone, consistent with expectations from simulated likelihood analyses. With a wwCDM model, we find S8=0.7490.026+0.027S_8=0.749^{+0.027}_{-0.026} and w0=1.39±0.31w_0=-1.39\pm 0.31, which gives an improvement of 22%22\% on the joint S8S_8-w0w_0 constraint. Our results are consistent with w0=1w_0=-1. Our new constraints are compared to CMB data from the Planck satellite, and we find that with the inclusion of Map3\langle M_{\rm ap}^3\rangle the existing tension between the data sets is at the level of 2.3σ2.3\sigma. We show that the third-order statistic enables us to self-calibrate the mean photometric redshift uncertainty parameter of the highest redshift bin with little degradation in the figure of merit. Our results demonstrate the constraining power of higher-order lensing statistics and establish Map3\langle M_{\rm ap}^3\rangle as a practical observable for joint analyses in current and future surveys.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.14018,
  title  = {Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Cosmological constraints from second and third-order shear statistics},
  author = {R. C. H. Gomes and S. Sugiyama and B. Jain and M. Jarvis and D. Anbajagane and A. Halder and G. A. Marques and S. Pandey and J. Marshall and A. Alarcon and A. Amon and K. Bechtol and M. Becker and G. Bernstein and A. Campos and R. Cawthon and C. Chang and R. Chen and A. Choi and J. Cordero and C. Davis and J. Derose and S. Dodelson and C. Doux and K. Eckert and F. Elsner and J. Elvin-Poole and S. Everett and A. Ferté and M. Gatti and G. Giannini and D. Gruen and I. Harrison and K. Herner and E. M. Huff and D. Huterer and N. Kuropatkin and P. F. Leget and N. Maccrann and J. Mccullough and J. Muir and J. Myles and A. Navarro Alsina and J. Prat and M. Raveri and R. P. Rollins and A. Roodman and A. J. Ross and E. S. Rykoff and C. Sánchez and L. F. Secco and E. Sheldon and T. Shin and M. Troxel and I. Tutusaus and T. N. Varga and B. Yanny and B. Yin and Y. Zhang and J. Zuntz and M. Aguena and F. Andrade-Oliveira and D. Bacon and J. Blazek and S. Bocquet and D. Brooks and A. Carnero Rosell and J. Carretero and M. Costanzi and L. da Costa and M. E. da Silva Pereira and T. M. Davis and J. De Vicente and H. T. Diehl and B. Flaugher and J. Frieman and G. Gutierrez and S. R. Hinton and D. L. Hollowood and K. Honscheid and D. J. James and N. Jeffrey and S. Lee and J. Mena-Fernández and R. Miquel and R. L. C. Ogando and A. A. Plazas Malagón and A. Porredon and E. Sanchez and D. Sanchez Cid and S. Samuroff and M. Smith and E. Suchyta and M. E. C. Swanson and D. Thomas and V. Vikram and J. Weller and M. Yamamoto},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.14018},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted version. 25 pages, 15 figures