Related papers: Statistical challenges in weak lensing cosmology
Weak lensing is the distortion (polarization) of images of distant objects, such as high redshift galaxies, by gravitational fields in the limit where the distortion is small. Gravitational potential fluctuations due to large scale…
Cosmic shear is the distortion of images of distant galaxies due to weak gravitational lensing by the large-scale structure in the Universe. Such images are coherently deformed by the tidal field of matter inhomogeneities along the line of…
A coherent over- or under-density contrast across a finite survey volume causes an upward- or downward-fluctuation in the observed number of halos. This fluctuation in halo number adds a significant co-variant scatter in the observed…
This paper details a description of the pattern of galaxy image distortion over the entire sky caused by the gravitational lensing which is the result of large scale inhomogeneities in our universe. We present a tensor spherical harmonic…
When a luminous source is extended, its distortions by weak gravitational lensing are richer than a mere combination of magnification and shear. In a recent work, we proposed an elegant formalism based on complex analysis to describe and…
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…
Weak lensing provides a direct measure of the distribution of mass in the universe, and is therefore a uniquely powerful probe of dark matter. Weak lensing can also be used to measure the twin phenomenon of dark energy, via its effect upon…
We investigate the weak gravitational lensing effect due to the large-scale structure of the universe on two-point correlations of local maxima ({\em hotspots}) in the 2D sky map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy.…
Cosmological analyses of second-order weak lensing statistics require precise and accurate covariance estimates. These covariances are impacted by two sometimes neglected terms: A negative contribution to the Gaussian covariance due to…
Weak gravitational lensing provides a unique method to map directly the dark matter in the Universe. The majority of lensing analyses uses the two-point statistics of the cosmic shear field to constrain the cosmological model yielding…
We explore a variety of statistics of clusters selected with cosmic shear measurement by utilizing both analytic models and large numerical simulations. We first develop a halo model to predict the abundance and the clustering of weak…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-shear regions are directly…
We present a cosmic shear analysis of the 100 square degree weak lensing survey, combining data from the CFHTLS-Wide, RCS, VIRMOS-DESCART and GaBoDS surveys. Spanning ~100 square degrees, with a median source redshift z~0.78, this combined…
We present a combined cosmic shear analysis of the modeling of line-of-sight distortions on strongly lensed extended arcs and galaxy shape measurements in the COSMOS field. We develop a framework to predict the covariance of strong lensing…
We study heterogeneous quantities that efficiently cross-correlate the lensing information encoded in CMB polarization and large-scale structures recovered from weak lensing galaxy surveys. These quantities allow us to take advantage of the…
An accurate covariance matrix is essential for obtaining reliable cosmological results when using a Gaussian likelihood. In this paper we study the covariance of pseudo-$C_\ell$ estimates of tomographic cosmic shear power spectra. Using two…
The observable universe contains density perturbations on scales larger than any finite volume survey. Perturbations on scales larger than a survey can measure degrade its power to constrain cosmological parameters. The dependence of survey…
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…
Weak gravitational lensing allows one to reconstruct the spatial distribution of the projected mass density across the sky. These "mass maps" provide a powerful tool for studying cosmology as they probe both luminous and dark matter. In…
We present a concept study on weak lensing map reconstruction through the cosmic magnification effect in galaxy number density distribution. We propose a minimal variance linear estimator to minimize both the dominant systematical and…