Related papers: Cosmic shear surveys
We discuss the origin of galactic angular momentum, and the statistics of the present day spin distribution. It is expected that the galaxy spin axes are correlated with the intermediate principal axis of the gravitational shear tensor.…
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…
Weak gravitational lensing provides a unique method to map directly the distribution of dark matter in the universe and to measure cosmological parameters. This cosmic-shear technique is based on the measurement of the weak distortions that…
We observed with the camera FORS1 on the VLT (UT1, ANTU) 50 randomly selected fields and analyzed the cosmic shear inside circular apertures with diameter ranging from 0.5 to 5.0 arc-minutes. The images were obtained in optimal conditions…
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…
Large scale correlations in the orientations of galaxies can result from alignments in their angular momentum vectors. These alignments arise from the tidal torques exerted on neighboring proto-galaxies by the smoothly varying shear field.…
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 surveys exploit measurements of galaxy ellipticities. These measurements are subject to errors which degrade the cosmological information that can be extracted from the surveys. Here we propose a way of using the galaxy data…
We report a detection of the coherent distortion of faint galaxies arising from gravitational lensing by foreground structures. This ``cosmic shear'' is potentially the most direct measure of the mass power spectrum, as it is unaffected by…
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 origin of astrophysical magnetic fields observed in galaxies and clusters of galaxies is still unclear. One possibility is that primordial magnetic fields generated in the early Universe provide seeds that grow through compression and…
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…
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…
Using data from the HST Medium Deep Survey, a long-term Key Project, together with generically similar archived data, we have discovered evidence for weak gravitational `shear' of background field galaxies (I = 22 -- 26) in the vicinity of…
As the volume and quality of modern galaxy surveys increase, so does the difficulty of measuring the cosmological signal imprinted in galaxy shapes. Weak gravitational lensing sourced by the most massive structures in the Universe generates…
Propagation of light in the universe with structure which amplify and modify the shape of distant galaxies, producing a correlation between nearby and distant density of galaxies, is a phenomena very important in cosmology for determining…
Cosmic shear leads to a correlation of the observed ellipticities of galaxies, an effect which is used to place constraints on cosmological parameters, and to explore the evolution of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. However, a…
Subject of this paper is the weak lensing effect on galaxies that show intrinsically correlated ellipticities. In our model, we investigate the distortion of the ellipticity field if the galaxies experience an apparent shift in their…
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 first detections of cosmic shear signal reported recently by 4 independent groups cover angular scales between one and 10 arcmin. On those scales, the cosmic shear is a signature of non-linear perturbations, like groups and clusters of…