Related papers: Large-Scale Structure with Gravitational Waves II:…
Weak gravitational lensing by foreground density perturbations generates a gradient mode in the shear of background images. In contrast, cosmological tensor perturbations induce a non-zero curl mode associated with image rotations. In this…
The shapes of galaxies trace scalar physics in the late-Universe through the large-scale gravitational potential. Are they also sensitive to higher-spin physics? We present a general study into the observational consequences of vector and…
Cosmic shear surveys have great promise as tools for precision cosmology, but can be subject to systematic errors including intrinsic ellipticity correlations of the source galaxies. The intrinsic alignments are believed to be small for…
It has recently been argued that the observed ellipticities of galaxies may be determined at least in part by the primordial tidal gravitational field in which the galaxy formed. Long-range correlations in the tidal field could thus lead to…
Intrinsically aligned galaxy shapes are one of the most important systematics in cosmic shear measurements. So far theoretical studies of intrinsic alignments almost exclusively focus on their statistics at the two-point level. Results from…
One of the most promising ways of detecting primordial gravitational waves generated during inflation is to observe B-modes of polarization, generated by Thomson scattering after reionization, in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Large…
Large scale correlations in the orientations of galaxies can result from alignments in their angular momentum vectors. These alignments arise from the tidal torques exerted on neighboring proto-galaxies by the smoothly varying shear field.…
Intrinsic alignments of galaxies are recognised as one of the most important systematic in weak lensing surveys on small angular scales. In this paper we investigate ellipticity correlation functions that are measured separately on…
Gravitational flexion, caused by derivatives of the gravitational tidal field, is potentially important for the analysis of the dark-matter distribution in gravitational lenses, such as galaxy clusters or the dark-matter haloes of galaxies.…
Point estimators for the shearing of galaxy images induced by gravitational lensing involve a complex inverse problem in the presence of noise, pixelization, and model uncertainties. We present a probabilistic forward modeling approach to…
The intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies acts as a systematic effect in weak lensing measurements and tends to introduce biases. It mimics the gravitational lensing signal which makes it difficult to distinguish it from the true…
Weak gravitational lensing by the large scale structure can be used to probe the dark matter distribution in the Universe directly and thus to probe cosmological models. The recent detection of cosmic shear by several groups has…
Gravitational lensing shear has the potential to be the most powerful tool for constraining the nature of dark energy. However, accurate measurement of galaxy shear is crucial and has been shown to be non-trivial by the Shear TEsting…
The distortion field defined by the ellipticities of galaxy shapes projected on the sky can be uniquely decomposed into a gradient and a curl component. If the observed ellipticities are induced by weak gravitational lensing, then 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 introduce a novel approach for detecting gravitational waves through their influence on the shape of resolved astronomical objects. This method, complementary to pulsar timing arrays and astrometric techniques, explores the…
We explore the possibility that an intrinsic correlation between galaxy ellipticities arising during the galaxy formation process may account for part of the shear signal recently reported by several groups engaged in weak lensing surveys.…
The intrinsic scatter in the ellipticities of galaxies about the mean shape, known as "shape noise," is the most important source of noise in weak lensing shear measurements. Several approaches to reducing shape noise have recently been put…
The leading locally observable effect of a long-wavelength metric perturbation corresponds to a tidal field. We derive the tidal field induced by scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations, and use second order perturbation theory to…
It has recently been argued that the observed ellipticities of galaxies may be determined at least in part by the primordial tidal gravitational field in which the galaxy formed. Long-range correlations in the tidal field could thus lead to…