Related papers: Measuring the Reduced Shear
For cosmic shear to become an accurate cosmological probe, systematic errors in the shear measurement method must be unambiguously identified and corrected for. Previous work of this series has demonstrated that cosmic shears can be…
We have developed a new technique for weak lensing analysis, with which the effect of the point spread function (PSF) on small galaxy images can be corrected for accurately. Rather than relying on weighted second moments of detected images,…
Images taken by space telescopes typically have a superb spatial resolution, but a relatively poor sampling rate due to the finite CCD pixel size. Beyond the Nyquist limit, it becomes uncertain how much the pixelation effect may affect the…
As imaging surveys progress in exploring the large-scale structure of the Universe through the use of weak gravitational lensing, achieving subpercent accuracy in estimating shape distortions caused by lensing, or shear, is imperative for…
We present a new shear estimator for weak lensing observations which properly accounts for the effects of a realistic point spread function (PSF). Images of faint galaxies are subject to gravitational shearing followed by smearing with the…
We present the theoretical and analytical bases of optimal techniques to measure weak gravitational shear from images of galaxies. We first characterize the geometric space of shears and ellipticity, then use this geometric interpretation…
Current optical imaging surveys for cosmology are covering large areas of sky. To exploit the statistical power of these surveys for weak lensing measurements requires shape measurement methods with subpercent systematic errors. We…
Cosmic shear measurements rely on our ability to measure and correct the Point Spread Function (PSF) of the observations. This PSF is measured using stars in the field, which give a noisy measure at random points in the field. Using Wiener…
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…
Sub-percent level accuracy in shear measurement is required by the Stage-IV weak lensing surveys. One important challenge is about suppressing the shear bias on source images of low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR$\lesssim10$). Previously, it…
We propose easy ways of correcting for the systematic errors caused by the photon noise and the pixelation effect in cosmic shear measurements. Our treatment of noise can reliably remove the noise contamination to the cosmic shear even when…
We derive an estimator of weak gravitational lensing shear from background galaxy images that avoids noise-induced biases through a rigorous Bayesian treatment of the measurement. The derived shear estimator disposes with the assignment of…
Cosmic shear has been identified as the method with the most potential to constrain dark energy. To capitalise on this potential it is necessary to measure galaxy shapes with great accuracy, which in turn requires a detailed model for the…
We investigate the problem of noise bias in maximum likelihood and maximum a posteriori estimators for cosmic shear. We derive the leading and next-to-leading order biases and compute them in the context of galaxy ellipticity measurements,…
Weak gravitational lensing has the potential to constrain cosmological parameters to high precision. However, as shown by the Shear TEsting Programmes (STEP) and GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing (GREAT) Challenges, measuring galaxy…
We investigate how discontinuities in the point spread function (PSF) and image noise affect weak gravitational lensing shear measurements. Our focus is on discontinuities that arise in coadded images, particularly when edges from input…
The weak distortions produced by gravitational lensing in the images of background galaxies provide a method to measure directly the distribution of mass in the universe. However this technique requires high precision measurements of the…
The control of systematic effects when measuring galaxy shapes is one of the main challenges for cosmic shear analyses. In this context, we study the fundamental limitations on shear accuracy due to the measurement of the Point Spread…
Statistics of the weak lensing of galaxies can be used to constrain cosmology if the galaxy shear can be estimated accurately. In general this requires accurate modelling of unlensed galaxy shapes and the point spread function (PSF). I…
Different options can be used in order to measure the shear from observations in the context of weak lensing. Here we introduce new methods where the isotropy assumption for the distribution of the source galaxies is implemented directly on…