Related papers: Galaxy alignments: Observations and impact on cosm…
The existence of an arc statistics problem was at the center of a strong debate in the last fifteen years. With the aim to clarify if the optical depth for giant gravitational arcs by galaxy clusters in the so called concordance model is…
We compute both extrinsic (lensing) and intrinsic contributions to the (galaxy-)density-ellipticity correlation function, the latter done using current analytic theories of tidal alignment. The gravitational lensing contribution has two…
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 consider the impact of key astrophysical and measurement systematics on constraints on dark energy and modifications to gravity on cosmic scales. We focus on upcoming photometric "Stage III" and "Stage IV" large scale structure surveys…
We investigate the extent to which cosmic size magnification may be used to com- plement cosmic shear in weak gravitational lensing surveys, with a view to obtaining high-precision estimates of cosmological parameters. Using simulated…
A long-standing problem in astrophysics is to measure the mass associated with galaxies. Gravitational lensing provides one of the cleanest ways to make this measurement. To date, the most powerful lensing probes of galactic mass have been…
It has long been known that galaxy shapes align coherently with the large-scale density field. Characterizing this effect is essential to interpreting measurements of weak gravitational lensing, the deflection of light from distant galaxies…
Intrinsic galaxy alignments yield an important contribution to the observed statistics of galaxy shapes. The general bias expansion for galaxy sizes and shapes in three dimensions has been recently described by Vlah, Chisari \& Schmidt…
Weak gravitational lensing can cause displacements, magnification, rotation and shearing of the images of distant galaxies. Most studies focus on the shear and magnification effects since they are more easily observed. In this paper we…
The light we observe from distant astrophysical objects including supernovae and quasars allows us to determine large distances in terms of a cosmological model. Despite the success of the standard cosmological model in fitting the data,…
We show that the spatial correlation of the intrinsic alignments (IAs) of galaxies, measured in galaxy redshift surveys, offers a precision route to improve the geometrical and dynamical constraints on cosmology. The IA has been treated as…
Gravitational lensing has emerged as a powerful probe of the matter distribution on subgalactic scales, which itself may contain important clues about the fundamental origins and properties of dark matter. Broadly speaking, two different…
Strong lensing is a powerful tool to address three major astrophysical issues: understanding the spatial distribution of mass at kpc and sub-kpc scale, where baryons and dark matter interact to shape galaxies as we see them; determining the…
Most of the matter in the universe is not luminous and can be observed directly only through its gravitational effect. An emerging technique called weak gravitational lensing uses background galaxies to reveal the foreground dark matter…
Our ability to extract cosmological information from galaxy surveys is limited by uncertainties in the galaxy-dark matter halo relationship for a given galaxy population, which are governed by the intricacies of galaxy formation. To…
(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…
We show how observations of multiply-imaged quasars at high redshift can be used as a probe of dark matter clumps (subhalos with masses ~ 10^9 solar masses) within the virialized extent of more massive lensing halos. A large abundance of…
The intrinsic alignment of galaxies constitutes the major astrophysical source of systematic errors in surveys of weak gravitational lensing by the large-scale structure. We discuss the principles, summarise the implementation, and…
Observations indicate that central galaxies show a significant alignment of their main shape axes with other galaxies in their group, as well as with the large-scale structure of the universe. Simulations have corroborated this finding,…
We present the theoretical and analytical bases of optimal techniques to measure weak gravitational shear from images of galaxies. We first characterize the geometric space of shears and ellipticity, then use this geometric interpretation…