Related papers: Magnification as a Tool in Weak Lensing
We seek to understand the impact on shape estimators obtained from circular and elliptical shapelet models under two realistic conditions: (a) only a limited number of shapelet modes is available for the model, and (b) the intrinsic…
Cosmic shear probes the distribution of dark matter via gravitational lensing of distant, background galaxies. We describe our cosmic shear survey consisting of deep blank fields observed with the Keck II telescope. We have found biases in…
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…
We study the ability of weak lensing surveys to detect galaxy clusters and constrain cosmological parameters, in particular the equation of state of dark energy. There are two major sources of noise for weak lensing cluster measurements:…
Weak gravitational lensing is rapidly becoming one of the principal probes of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. In this brief review we outline how weak lensing helps determine the structure of dark matter halos, measure the…
Cosmic shear leads to a correlation of the observed ellipticities of galaxies, an effect which is used to place constraints on cosmological parameters, and to explore the evolution of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. However, a…
We investigate the effect of weak gravitational lensing in the limit of small angular scales where projected galaxy clustering is strongly nonlinear. This is the regime likely to be probed by future weak lensing surveys. We use…
Kinematic weak lensing describes the distortion of a galaxy's projected velocity field due to lensing shear, an effect recently reported for the first time by Gurri et al. based on a sample of 18 galaxies at $z \sim 0.1$. In this paper, we…
Weak lensing shear estimation typically results in per galaxy statistical errors significantly larger than the sought after gravitational signal of only a few percent. These statistical errors are mostly a result of shape-noise -- an…
The wealth of incoming and future cosmological observations will allow us to map out the structure and evolution of the observable universe to an unprecedented level of precision. Among these observations is the weak gravitational lensing…
Weak lensing by large-scale structure is a powerful probe of cosmology if the apparent alignments in the shapes of distant galaxies can be accurately measured. Most studies have therefore focused on improving the fidelity of the shape…
Weak gravitational lensing (WL) causes distortions of galaxy images and probes massive structures on large scales, allowing us to understand the late-time evolution of the Universe. One way to extract the cosmological information from WL is…
Strong gravitational lensing at the galaxy scale is a valuable tool for various applications in astrophysics and cosmology. The primary uses of galaxy-scale lensing are to study elliptical galaxies' mass structure and evolution, constrain…
We use statistical inference theory to explore the constraints from future galaxy weak lensing (cosmic shear) surveys combined with the current CMB constraints on cosmological parameters, focusing particularly on the running of the spectral…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-shear regions are directly…
Measurement of the gravitational distortion of images of distant galaxies is rapidly becoming established as a powerful probe of the dark mass distribution in clusters of galaxies. With the advent of large mosaics of CCD's these methods…
We apply a mass reconstruction technique to simulated large-scale structure gravitational distortion maps, from 2.5' to 10 degree scales, for different cosmological scenarii. The projected mass is reconstructed using a non-parametric least…
In this talk I review some of the key questions that weak lensing observations of clusters can potentially answer, and sketch the progress that has been made to date in extracting quantitative estimates of masses and density profiles. A…
We present a combined cosmic shear analysis of the modeling of line-of-sight distortions on strongly lensed extended arcs and galaxy shape measurements in the COSMOS field. We develop a framework to predict the covariance of strong lensing…
Weak gravitational lensing observations probe the spectrum and evolution of density fluctuations and the cosmological parameters which govern them but are currently limited to small fields and subject to selection biases. We show how the…