Related papers: Large-Scale Structure with Gravitational Waves II:…
During the past few years, secure detections of cosmic shear have been obtained, manifest in the correlation of the observed ellipticities of galaxies. Constraints have already been placed on cosmological parameters, such as the…
In a general metric theory of gravitation in four dimensions, six polarizations of a gravitational wave are allowed: two scalar and two vector modes, in addition to two tensor modes in general relativity. Such additional polarization modes…
Intrinsic galaxy alignments constitute the major astrophysical systematic of forthcoming weak gravitational lensing surveys but also yield unique insights into galaxy formation and evolution. We build analytic models for the distribution of…
Weak gravitational lensing is now established as a powerful method to measure mass fluctuations in the universe. It relies on the measurement of small coherent distortions of the images of background galaxies. Even low-level correlations in…
The topic of this paper is a generalisation of the linear model for intrinsic alignments of galaxies to intrinsic flexions: In this model, third moments of the brightness distribution reflect distortions of elliptical galaxies caused by…
(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…
Inflation produces a primordial spectrum of gravity waves in addition to the density perturbations which seed structure formation. We compute the signature of these gravity waves in the large scale shear field. In particular, the shear can…
Cosmic shear is a powerful method to constrain cosmology, provided that any systematic effects are under control. The intrinsic alignment of galaxies is expected to severely bias parameter estimates if not taken into account. We explore the…
Galaxy shapes have been observed to align with external tidal fields generated by the large-scale structures of the Universe. While the main source for these tidal fields is provided by long-wavelength density perturbations, tensor…
Subject of this paper are intrinsic ellipticity correlations between galaxies, their statistical properties, their observability with future surveys and their interference with weak gravitational lensing measurements. Using an angular…
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 compute the reduced cosmic shear up to second order in the gravitational potential without relying on the small angle or thin-lens approximation. This is obtained by solving the Sachs equation which describes the deformation of the…
Weak gravitational lensing analyses are fundamentally limited by the intrinsic, non-Gaussian distribution of galaxy shapes. We explore alternative statistics for samples of ellipticity measurements that are unbiased, efficient, and robust.…
The vector mode of cosmological perturbation theory imprints characteristic signals on the weak lensing signals such as curl- and B-modes which are never imprinted by the scalar mode. However, the vector mode is neglected in the standard…
The integral polarization of spiral galaxies in the radio band has been proposed as a new tracer of the intrinsic galaxy shape that augments lensing shear measurements. We revisit the method of shear estimation in this context. We introduce…
We note that galaxy-galaxy lensing by non-spherical galaxy halos produces a net anti-correlation between the shear of background galaxies and the ellipticity of foreground galaxies. This anti-correlation would contaminate the tomographic…
Studies of weak gravitational lensing by large-scale structures require the measurement of the distortions introduced to the shapes of distant galaxies at the few percent level by anisotropic light deflection along the line of sight. To…
Observational evidence shows that gravitational lensing induces an angular correlation between the distribution of galaxies and much more distant QSOs. We use weak gravitational lensing theory to calculate this angular correlation, updating…
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…
Gravitational lensing causes background galaxy images to become aligned, and the statistical characteristics of the image alignments can then be used to constrain the power spectrum of mass fluctuations. Analyses of gravitational lensing…