Related papers: Weak lensing goes bananas: What flexion really mea…
We have investigated, using both a theoretical and an empirical approach, the frequency of low redshift galaxy-galaxy lensing systems in which the signature of weak lensing might be directly detectable. We find good agreement between these…
Weak gravitational lensing is a unique probe of the dark side of the universe: it provides a direct way to map the distribution of dark matter around galaxies, clusters of galaxies and on cosmological scales. Furthermore, the measurement of…
This paper describes the definition of a typical next-generation space-based weak gravitational lensing experiment. We first adopt a set of top-level science requirements from the literature, based on the scale and depth of the galaxy…
The current methods available to estimate gravitational shear from astronomical images of galaxies introduce systematic errors which can affect the accuracy of weak lensing cosmological constraints. We study the impact of KSB shape…
Weak lensing studies typically require excellent seeing conditions for the purpose of maximizing the number density of well-resolved galaxy images. It is interesting to ask to what extent the seeing size limits the usefulness of the…
One of the most powerful techniques to study the dark sector of the Universe is weak gravitational lensing. In practice, to infer the reduced shear, weak lensing measures galaxy shapes, which are the consequence of both the intrinsic…
Telescope Point Spread Function (PSF) quality is critical for realising the potential of cosmic weak lensing observations to constrain dark energy and test General Relativity. In this paper we use quantitative weak gravitational lensing…
Using data from the HST Medium Deep Survey, a long-term Key Project, together with generically similar archived data, we have discovered evidence for weak gravitational `shear' of background field galaxies (I = 22 -- 26) in the vicinity of…
Strong gravitational lensing images are subject to shape distortions due to inhomogeneities along the line of sight. The leading order shape distortion is shear, which, if measurable, will be a complementary cosmological probe to…
The measurement of the integrated optical polarization of weakly gravitationally lensed galaxies can provide considerable constraints on lens models. The method outlined depends on fact that the orientation of the direction of optical…
Gravitational weak lensing maps the location of (dark) matter at all scales. The lens-induced distortion field traces gravity fields and can be used to reconstruct the mass distribution in galaxies, groups, clusters of galaxies or…
In this paper, we study gravitational lensing by groups of galaxies. Since groups are abundant and therefore have a large covering fraction on the sky, lensing by groups is likely to be very important observationally. Besides, it has…
In strong gravitational lens systems, the light bending is usually dominated by one main galaxy, but may be affected by other mass along the line of sight (LOS). Shear and convergence can be used to approximate the contributions from less…
According to the theory of general relativity, masses deflect light in a way similar to convex glass lenses. This gravitational lensing effect is astigmatic, giving rise to image distortions. These distortions allow to quantify cosmic…
Weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies by foreground structures has proven to be a powerful tool to study the mass distribution in the universe. Nowadays, attention has shifted from clusters of galaxies to the statistical properties…
We account for all the image distortions relevant to weak gravitational lensing to second order. Besides the familiar shear, convergence, rotation and flexions, we find a new image distortion with two distinct descriptions, the twist and…
A long standing problem in weak lensing is about how to construct cosmic shear estimators from galaxy images. Conventional methods average over a single quantity per galaxy to estimate each shear component. We show that any such shear…
Weak gravitational lensing alters the apparent separations between observed sources, potentially affecting clustering statistics. We derive a general expression for the lensing deflection which is valid for any three-point statistic, and…
While most strong-gravitational-lensing systems may be roughly modelled by a single massive object between the source and the observer, in the details all the structures near the light path contribute to the observed images. These…
We investigate the distortions due to this shear in the microlensing light curves and in the astrometric microlensing centroid shift trajectories. As expected, the light curve deviation increases as the shear increases and the impact…