Related papers: Shape, shear and flexion II - Quantifying the flex…
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…
In this paper we provide a statistical analysis of the parameter-free method often used in weak lensing mass reconstructions. It is found that a proper assessment of the errors involved in such a non-local analysis requires the study of the…
We present weak lensing mass estimates of seven shear-selected galaxy cluster candidates from the Deep Lens Survey. The clusters were previously identified as mass peaks in convergence maps of 8.6 sq. deg of R band imaging, and followed up…
We introduce a new adaptive and fully Bayesian grid-based method to model strong gravitational lenses with extended images. The primary goal of this method is to quantify the level of luminous and dark-mass substructure in massive galaxies,…
Strong gravitational lens systems with extended sources are of special interest because they provide additional constraints on the models of the lens systems. To use a gravitational lens system for measuring the Hubble constant, one would…
Dedicated 'Stage IV' observatories will soon observe the entire extragalactic sky, to measure the 'cosmic shear' distortion of galaxy shapes by weak gravitational lensing. To measure the apparent shapes of those galaxies, we present an…
Exotic objects such as the Ellis wormhole are expected to act as gravitational lenses. Much like their nonexotic counterparts, information about these lenses can be found by considering the strong and weak lensing fields they induce. In…
Weak lensing provides a direct way of mapping the density distribution in the universe. To reconstruct the density field from the shear catalog, an important step is to build the shear field from the shear catalog, which can be quite…
We present the weak lensing methodology applied to our multi-colour imaging survey of X-ray luminous galaxy clusters conducted with the wide field CFH12k camera. This method, which is converting a fully reduced CFH12k image into cluster…
We propose new analytic formulae describing light bending in Schwarzschild metric. For emission radii above the photon orbit at 1.5 Schwarzschild radius, the formulae have an accuracy of better than 0.2% for the bending angle and 3% for the…
We are developing a general, unified, and rigorous analytical framework for using gravitational lensing by compact objects to test different theories of gravity beyond the weak-deflection limit. In this paper we present the formalism for…
We analyse the first measurements from precision weak lensing (PWL): a new methodology for measuring individual galaxy-galaxy weak lensing through velocity information. Our goal is to understand the observed shear distribution from PWL,…
We study the limits of accuracy for weak lensing maps of dark matter using diffuse 21-cm radiation from the pre-reionization epoch using simulations. We improve on previous "optimal" quadratic lensing estimators by using shear and…
The topology of weak lensing fields is studied using the 2-dimensional genus statistic. Simulated fields of the weak lensing convergence are used to focus on the effect of nonlinear gravitional evolution and to model the statistical errors…
We extend the Bayesian model fitting shape measurement method presented in Miller et al. (2007) and use the method to estimate the shear from the Shear TEsting Programme simulations (STEP). The method uses a fast model fitting algorithm…
From the nature of dark matter to the rate of expansion of our Universe, observations of distant galaxies distorted through strong gravitational lensing have the potential to answer some of the major open questions in astrophysics. Modeling…
(Abridged) Weak gravitational lensing induces distortions on the images of background galaxies, and thus provides a direct measure of mass fluctuations in the universe. Since the distortions induced by lensing on the images of background…
We present the first measurement of weak lensing by large-scale structure on 1-4 degree scales based on the FIRST Radio Survey, a quarter-sky, 20-cm survey produced with the NRAO Very Large Array (VLA). The large angular scales provide an…
We propose a new ray-tracing algorithm to measure the weak lensing shear and convergence fields directly from N-body simulations. We calculate the deflection of the light rays lensed by the 3-D mass density field or gravitational potential…
The principles of measuring the shapes of galaxies by a model-fitting approach are discussed in the context of shape-measurement for surveys of weak gravitational lensing. It is argued that such an approach should be optimal, allowing…