Related papers: Mapping the Dark Matter in Clusters
The caustic technique for measuring mass profiles of galaxy clusters relies on the assumption of spherical symmetry. When applied to aspherical galaxy clusters, the method yields mass estimates affected by the cluster orientation. Here we…
We present the first sample of galaxy clusters selected on the basis of their weak gravitational lensing shear. The shear induced by a cluster is a function of its mass profile and its redshift relative to the background galaxies being…
Observations of the clustering of galaxies can provide useful information about the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. In order to extract accurate cosmological parameters from galaxy surveys, it is important to understand how the…
In this talk I review some of the key questions that weak lensing observations of clusters can potentially answer, and sketch the progress that has been made to date in extracting quantitative estimates of masses and density profiles. A…
A long-standing observed curiosity of globular clusters (GCs) has been that both the number and total mass of GCs in a galaxy are linearly correlated with the galaxy's virial mass, whereas its stellar component shows no such linear…
We investigate the weak lensing shear due to dark matter galaxy halos whose mass distributions, as projected on the sky, are nearly elliptical. The shear pattern due to these halos is anisotropic about the lens centers and we quantify the…
Weak lensing alters the size of images with a similar magnitude to the distortion due to shear. Galaxy size probes the convergence field, and shape the shear field, both of which contain cosmological information. We show the gains expected…
Weak gravitational lensing has become an important method to determine the masses of galaxy clusters. The intrinsic shapes of the galaxies are a dominant source of uncertainty, but there are other limitations to the precision that can be…
The phenomenon of cosmic shear, or distortion of images of distant sources unaccompanied by magnification, is an effective way of probing the content and state of the foreground Universe, because light rays do not have to pass through mass…
We aim at investigating potential biases in lensing and X-ray methods to measure the cluster mass profiles. We do so by performing realistic simulations of lensing and X-ray observations that are subsequently analyzed using observational…
It is now routine to measure the weak gravitational lensing shear signal from the mean ellipticity of distant galaxies. However, conversion between ellipticity and shear assumes local linearity of the lensing potential (ie that the spatial…
Weak gravitational lensing is considered to be one of the most powerful tools to study the mass and the mass distribution of galaxy clusters. However, weak lensing mass reconstructions are plagued by the so-called mass-sheet degeneracy--the…
Weak gravitational lensing of background galaxies is a unique, direct probe of the distribution of matter in clusters of galaxies. We review several important aspects of cluster weak gravitational lensing together with recent advances in…
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…
Two colour photometry of the cluster A1689 reveals a `relative magnification-bias' between lensed blue and red background galaxies, arising from a dependence of the faint galaxy count-slope on colour. The colour distribution is skewed…
Cold dark matter (CDM) constitutes most of the matter in the Universe. The interplay between dark and luminous matter in dense cosmic environments like galaxy clusters is studied theoretically using cosmological simulations. Observed…
Cosmic shear probes the distribution of dark matter via gravitational lensing of distant, background galaxies. We describe our cosmic shear survey consisting of deep blank fields observed with the Keck II telescope. We have found biases in…
The distortion of the images of faint high-redshift galaxies can be used to probe the intervening mass distribution. This weak gravitational lensing effect has been used recently to study the (projected) mass distribution of several…
Motivated by the significant overdensity of background bright quasars recently detected behind the foreground clusters of galaxies on scale of $10$ arcminutes, we have investigated the possibility of attributing the quasar-cluster…
We investigate whether the shapes of galaxy clusters inferred from weak gravitational lensing can be used as a test of the nature of dark matter. We analyse mock weak lensing data, with gravitational lenses extracted from cosmological…