Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Results: Redshift Calibration of the Weak Lensing Source Galaxies
Abstract
Determining the distribution of redshifts for galaxies in wide-field photometric surveys is essential for robust cosmological studies of weak gravitational lensing. We present the methodology, calibrated redshift distributions, and uncertainties of the final Dark Energy Survey Year 6 (Y6) weak lensing galaxy data, divided into four redshift bins centered at . We combine independent information from two methods on the full shape of redshift distributions: optical and near-infrared photometry within an improved Self-Organizing Map (SOMPZ) framework, and cross-correlations with spectroscopic galaxy clustering measurements (WZ), which we demonstrate to be consistent both in terms of the redshift calibration itself and in terms of resulting cosmological constraints within 0.1. We describe the process used to produce an ensemble of redshift distributions that account for several known sources of uncertainty. Among these, imperfection in the calibration sample due to the lack of faint, representative spectra is the dominant factor. The final uncertainty on mean redshift in each bin is . We ensure the robustness of the redshift distributions by leveraging new image simulations and a cross-check with galaxy shape information via the shear ratio (SR) method.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.23566,
title = {Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Results: Redshift Calibration of the Weak Lensing Source Galaxies},
author = {B. Yin and A. Amon and A. Campos and M. A. Troxel and W. d'Assignies and G. M. Bernstein and G. Camacho-Ciurana and S. Mau and M. R. Becker and G. Giannini and A. Alarcón and D. Gruen and J. McCullough and M. Yamamoto and D. Anbajagane and S. Dodelson and C. Sánchez and J. Myles and J. Prat and C. Chang and M. Crocce and K. Bechtol and A. Ferté and M. Gatti and N. MacCrann and R. Marco and A. Porredón and D. Sánchez Cid and T. Schutt and M. Tabbut and C. To and T. Abbott and M. Aguena and O. Alves and D. Bacon and S. Bocquet and D. Brooks and R. Camilleri and A. Carnero Rosell and M. Carrasco Kind and J. Carretero and F. Castander and R. Cawthon and C. Conselice and L. da Costa and M. da Silva Pereira and T. Davis and J. De Vicente and S. Desai and H. Diehl and C. Doux and A. Drlica-Wagner and T. Eifler and J. Elvin-Poole and S. Everett and B. Flaugher and P. Fosalba and D. Francis de Souza and J. Frieman and J. Garcia-Bellido and E. Gaztañaga and P. Giles and G. Gutierrez and S. Hinton and D. Hollowood and K. Honscheid and D. Huterer and B. Jain and D. James and K. Kuehn and S. Lee and H. Lin and J. Marshall and J. Mena-Fernández and F. Menanteau and R. Miquel and J. Muir and R. Ogando and A. Palmese and D. Petravick and A. Plazas Malagón and A. Roodman and R. Rosenfeld and S. Samuroff and E. Sánchez and I. Sevilla and E. Sheldon and T. Shin and M. Smith and E. Suchyta and M. Swanson and G. Tarlé and D. Thomas and V. Vikram and A. Walker and P. Wiseman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.23566},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
25 pages, 18 figures