Related papers: On the Probability Distributions of Ellipticity
The fraction of high-redshift sources which are multiply-imaged by intervening galaxies is strongly dependent on the cosmological constant, and so can be a useful probe of the cosmological model. However its power is limited by various…
Gravitational lensing is potentially able to observe mass-selected halos, and to measure the projected cluster mass function. An optimal mass-selection requires a quantitative understanding of the noise behavior in mass maps. This paper is…
We investigate the expected correlation between the weak gravitational shear of distant galaxies and the orientation of foreground galaxies, through the use of numerical simulations. This shear-ellipticity correlation can mimic a…
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…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys have the potential to directly probe mass density fluctuation in the universe. Recent studies have shown that it is possible to model the statistics of the convergence field at small angular scales by…
We test the methods developed in previous papers for inferring the intrinsic shapes of elliptical galaxies, using simulated objects from N-body experiments. The shapes of individual objects are correctly reproduced to within the statistical…
The disks of spiral galaxies are generally elliptical rather than circular. The distribution of ellipticities can be fit with a log-normal distribution. For a sample of 12,764 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 1 (SDSS…
Likelihood analysis is typically limited to normally distributed noise due to the difficulty of determining the probability density function of complex, high-dimensional, non-Gaussian, and anisotropic noise. This is a major limitation for…
High precision polarization measurements open new opportunities for the study of the magnetic field structure as traced by polarimetric measurements of the interstellar dust emission. Polarization parameters suffer from bias in the presence…
Accurate measurement of gravitational shear from images of distant galaxies is one of the most direct ways of studying the distribution of mass in the universe. We describe an implementation of a technique that is based on the shapelets…
The center of gravity is one of the most frequently used algorithm for position reconstruction with different analytical forms for the noise optimization. The error distributions of the different forms are essential instruments to improve…
We show an efficient way to compute wide-angle or all-sky statistics of galaxy intrinsic alignment in three-dimensional configuration space. For this purpose, we expand the two-point correlation function using a newly introduced…
The elliptical power-law (EPL) model of the mass in a galaxy is widely used in strong gravitational lensing analyses. However, the distribution of mass in real galaxies is more complex. We quantify the biases due to this model mismatch by…
We present equations for the gravitational lensing flexion expected for an elliptical lens mass distribution. These can be reduced to one-dimensional finite integrals, thus saving significant computing time over a full two-dimensional…
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…
The probability distribution of lens image separations is calculated for the ``standard'' gravitational lensing statistics model in an arbitrary, flat Robertson-Walker universe, where lensing galaxies are singular isothermal spheres that…
We estimate the bias on weak lensing mass measurements of shear-selected galaxy cluster samples. The mass bias is expected to be significant because constructions of cluster samples from peaks in weak lensing mass maps and measurements of…
Shear estimation bias from galaxy detection and blending identification is now recognized as an issue for ongoing and future weak lensing surveys. Currently, the empirical approach to correcting for this bias involves numerically shearing…
We measure the ellipticity of isolated clusters of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) using gravitational lensing. We stack the clusters, rotating so that the major axes of the ellipses determined by the positions of cluster…
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…