Lensing Bias in Cosmic Shear
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
2009-08-17 v3
Abstract
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 2-3\sigma level in DETF Stage III experiments, such as the Dark Energy Survey.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0904.4703,
title = {Lensing Bias in Cosmic Shear},
author = {Fabian Schmidt and Eduardo Rozo and Scott Dodelson and Lam Hui and Erin Sheldon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.4703},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
14 pages; 4 figures (this version). Accepted for publication in ApJ. v2: incorporating referee's comments; v3: updated acknowledgments