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(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…
In this paper we investigate the impact that realistic scale-dependence systematic effects may have on cosmic shear tomography. We model spatially varying residual ellipticity and size variations in weak lensing measurements and propagate…
The control of systematic effects when measuring galaxy shapes is one of the main challenges for cosmic shear analyses. In this context, we study the fundamental limitations on shear accuracy due to the measurement of the Point Spread…
The tilt, rotation, or offset of each CCD with respect to the focal plane, as well as the distortion of the focal plane itself, cause shape distortions to the observed objects, an effect typically known as field distortion (FD). We point…
Weak-lensing shear estimates show a troublesome dependence on the apparent brightness of the galaxies used to measure the ellipticity: In several studies, the amplitude of the inferred shear falls sharply with decreasing source…
Cosmic shear tomography has emerged as one of the most promising tools to both investigate the nature of dark energy and discriminate between General Relativity and modified gravity theories. In order to successfully achieve these goals,…
Current and future imaging surveys will measure cosmic shear with a statistical precision that demands a deeper understanding of potential systematic biases in galaxy shape measurements than has been achieved to date. We investigate the…
Current measurements of the weak lensing signal induced by large scale structure provide useful constraints on a range of cosmological parameters. However, the ultimate succes of this technique depends on the accuracy with which one can…
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…
A long standing problem in weak lensing is about how to construct cosmic shear estimators from galaxy images. Conventional methods average over a single quantity per galaxy to estimate each shear component. We show that any such shear…
In tomographic weak lensing surveys, the presence of nulling properties reveals symmetries inherent in the data, which rely solely on the geometrical properties of the Universe. Ensuring its validity thus provides us with constraints on the…
We present a new shear estimator for weak lensing observations which properly accounts for the effects of a realistic point spread function (PSF). Images of faint galaxies are subject to gravitational shearing followed by smearing with the…
Weak lensing is emerging as a powerful observational tool to constrain cosmological models, but is at present limited by an incomplete understanding of many sources of systematic error. Many of these errors are multiplicative and depend on…
We propose a new method for Point Spread Function (PSF) correction in weak gravitational lensing shear analysis using an artificial image with the same ellipticity as the lensed image. This avoids the systematic error associated with the…
Cosmic shear has been identified as the method with the most potential to constrain dark energy. To capitalise on this potential it is necessary to measure galaxy shapes with great accuracy, which in turn requires a detailed model for the…
Cosmic shear holds great promise for a precision independent measurement of $\Omega\rm_m$, the mass density of the universe relative to the critical density. The signal is expected to be weak, so a thorough understanding of systematic…
We develop a new method to estimate gravitational shear by adopting an elliptical weight function to measure background galaxy images. In doing so, we introduce a new concept of "zero plane" which is an imaginal source plane where shapes of…
We identify and study a previously unknown systematic effect on cosmic shear measurements, caused by the selection of galaxies used for shape measurement, in particular the rejection of close (blended) galaxy pairs. We use ray-tracing…
A simple theoretical framework for the description and interpretation of spatially correlated modelling residuals is presented, and the resulting tools are found to provide a useful aid to model selection in the context of weak…
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.…