English

Weak lensing distortions beyond shear

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2019-01-29 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

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 calculate such distortions. The present article further elaborates this finite-beam approach, and applies it to a realistic cosmological model. In particular, the cosmic correlations of image distortions beyond shear are predicted for the first time. These constitute new weak-lensing observables, sensitive to very-small-scale features of the distribution of matter in the Universe. While the major part of the analysis is performed in the approximation of circular sources, a general method for extending it to noncircular sources is presented and applied to the astrophysically relevant case of elliptic sources.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.03924,
  title  = {Weak lensing distortions beyond shear},
  author = {Pierre Fleury and Julien Larena and Jean-Philippe Uzan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.03924},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

14+2 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T04:02:29.375Z