Related papers: Seeing in the dark -- I. Multi-epoch alchemy
Weak lensing surveys exploit measurements of galaxy ellipticities. These measurements are subject to errors which degrade the cosmological information that can be extracted from the surveys. Here we propose a way of using the galaxy data…
We develop and test a method for measuring the gravitational lensing induced distortion of faint background galaxies. We first describe how we locate the galaxies and measure a 2-component `polarisation' or ellipticity statistic $e_\alpha$…
The wavelength dependence of atmospheric refraction causes elongation of finite-bandwidth images along the elevation vector, which produces spurious signals in weak gravitational lensing shear measurements unless this atmospheric dispersion…
Given a galaxy image, one cannot simply measure its flexion. An image's spin one and three shape properties, typically associated with F- and G-flexion, are actually complicated functions of the galaxy's intrinsic shape and the telescope's…
We develop a new method to estimate gravitational shear by adopting an elliptical weight function to measure background galaxy images. In doing so, we introduce a new concept of "zero plane" which is an imaginal source plane where shapes of…
We investigate the impact of point spread function (PSF) fitting errors on cosmic shear measurements using the concepts of complexity and sparsity. Complexity, introduced in a previous paper, characterizes the number of degrees of freedom…
Chromatic point-spread-function (PSF) effects arise from differences between the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of stars, used to model the PSF, and galaxies, used to measure shape distortions due to weak gravitational lensing, or…
Weak gravitational lensing is one of the most powerful tools for cosmology, while subject to challenges in quantifying subtle systematic biases. The Point Spread Function (PSF) can cause biases in weak lensing shear inference when the PSF…
Convergence maps of the integrated matter distribution are a key science result from weak gravitational lensing surveys. To date, recovering convergence maps has been performed using a planar approximation of the celestial sphere. However,…
Weak lensing by large scale structure or 'cosmic shear' is a potentially powerful cosmological probe to shed new light on Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Modified Gravity. It is based on the weak distortions induced by large-scale structures…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys are rapidly becoming important tools to probe directly the mass density fluctuations in the universe and its background dynamics. Earlier studies have shown that it is possible to model the statistics of…
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…
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…
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…
Weak Gravitational Lensing is a powerful probe of the dark sector of the Universe. One of the main challenges for this technique is the treatment of systematics in the measurement of cosmic shear from galaxy shapes. In an earlier work,…
Weak gravitational lensing, or weak lensing, is one of the most powerful probes for dark matter and dark energy science, although it faces increasing challenges in controlling systematic uncertainties as \edit{the statistical errors become…
A simple theoretical framework for the description and interpretation of spatially correlated modelling residuals is presented, and the resulting tools are found to provide a useful aid to model selection in the context of weak…
Stage-IV photometric galaxy surveys are designed to measure the position and shapes of billions of galaxies. Their aim is to characterise the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe using galaxy clustering and weak gravitational…
In this manuscript of the habilitation \`a diriger des recherches (HDR), the author presents some of his work over the last ten years. The main topic of this thesis is cosmic shear, the distortion of images of distant galaxies due to weak…
Weak gravitational lensing is one of the key probes of cosmology. Cosmic shear surveys aimed at measuring the distribution of matter in the universe are currently being carried out (Pan-STARRS) or planned for the coming decade (DES, LSST,…