Collisions between galaxy clusters provide a test of the nongravitational forces acting on dark matter. Dark matter's lack of deceleration in the "bullet cluster" collision constrained its ...self-interaction cross section σDM/m < 1.25 square centimenters per gram (cm2μ) 68% confidence limit (CL) (σDM, self-interaction cross section; m, unit mass of dark matter) for long-ranged forces. Using the Chandra and Hubble Space Telescopes, we have now observed 72 collisions, including both major and minor mergers. Combining these measurements statistically, we detect the existence of dark mass at 7.6σ significance. The position of the dark mass has remained closely aligned within 5.8 ± 8.2 kiloparsecs of associated stars, implying a self-interaction cross section σDM/m < 0.47 cm2/g (95% CL) and disfavoring some proposed extensions to the standard model.
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Abstract
We present cosmological parameter constraints from a joint analysis of three cosmological probes: the tomographic cosmic shear signal in ∼450 deg2 of data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS), ...the galaxy-matter cross-correlation signal of galaxies from the Galaxies And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey determined with KiDS weak lensing, and the angular correlation function of the same GAMA galaxies. We use fast power spectrum estimators that are based on simple integrals over the real-space correlation functions, and show that they are practically unbiased over relevant angular frequency ranges. We test our full pipeline on numerical simulations that are tailored to KiDS and retrieve the input cosmology. By fitting different combinations of power spectra, we demonstrate that the three probes are internally consistent. For all probes combined, we obtain $S_8\equiv \sigma _8 \sqrt{\Omega _{\rm m}/0.3}=0.800_{-0.027}^{+0.029}$, consistent with Planck and the fiducial KiDS-450 cosmic shear correlation function results. Marginalizing over wide priors on the mean of the tomographic redshift distributions yields consistent results for S8 with an increase of $28\, {per \,cent}$ in the error. The combination of probes results in a 26 per cent reduction in uncertainties of S8 over using the cosmic shear power spectra alone. The main gain from these additional probes comes through their constraining power on nuisance parameters, such as the galaxy intrinsic alignment amplitude or potential shifts in the redshift distributions, which are up to a factor of 2 better constrained compared to using cosmic shear alone, demonstrating the value of large-scale structure probe combination.
We present a finely binned tomographic weak lensing analysis of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) mitigating contamination to the signal from the presence of intrinsic ...galaxy alignments via the simultaneous fit of a cosmological model and an intrinsic alignment model. CFHTLenS spans 154 square degrees in five optical bands, with accurate shear and photometric redshifts for a galaxy sample with a median redshift of z
m = 0.70. We estimate the 21 sets of cosmic shear correlation functions associated with six redshift bins, each spanning the angular range of 1.5 < θ < 35 arcmin. We combine this CFHTLenS data with auxiliary cosmological probes: the cosmic microwave background with data from WMAP7, baryon acoustic oscillations with data from Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and a prior on the Hubble constant from the Hubble Space Telescope distance ladder. This leads to constraints on the normalization of the matter power spectrum σ8 = 0.799 ± 0.015 and the matter density parameter Ωm = 0.271 ± 0.010 for a flat Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmology. For a flat wCDM cosmology, we constrain the dark energy equation-of-state parameter w = −1.02 ± 0.09. We also provide constraints for curved ΛCDM and wCDM cosmologies. We find the intrinsic alignment contamination to be galaxy-type dependent with a significant intrinsic alignment signal found for early-type galaxies, in contrast to the late-type galaxy sample for which the intrinsic alignment signal is found to be consistent with zero.
Weak lensing by large-scale structure is a powerful probe of cosmology if the apparent alignments in the shapes of distant galaxies can be accurately measured. Most studies have therefore focused on ...improving the fidelity of the shape measurements themselves, but the preceding step of object detection has been largely ignored. In this paper, we study the impact of object detection for a
Euclid
-like survey and show that it leads to biases that exceed requirements for the next generation of cosmic shear surveys. In realistic scenarios, the blending of galaxies is an important source of detection bias. We find that M
ETA
D
ETECTION
is able to account for blending, leading to average multiplicative biases that meet requirements for Stage IV surveys, provided a sufficiently accurate model for the point spread function is available. Further work is needed to estimate the performance for actual surveys. Combined with sufficiently realistic image simulations, this provides a viable way forward towards accurate shear estimates for Stage IV surveys.
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If left unchecked modeling uncertainties at small scales, due to poorly understood baryonic physics and nonlinear structure formation, will significantly bias Stage IV cosmic shear two-point ...statistic parameter constraints. While it is perhaps possible to run N-body or hydrodynamical simulations to determine the impact of these effects this approach is computationally expensive; especially to test a large number of theories of gravity. Instead we propose directly removing sensitivity to small-scale structure from the lensing spectrum, creating a statistic that is robust to these uncertainties. We do this by taking a redshift-dependent ?-cut after applying the Bernardeau-Nishimichi-Taruya (BNT) nulling scheme. This reorganizes the information in the lensing spectrum to make the relationship between the angular scale, ?, and the structure scale, k, much clearer compared to standard cosmic shear power spectra-for which no direct relationship exists. We quantify the effectiveness of this method at removing sensitivity to small scales and compute the predicted Fisher error on the dark energy equation of state, w0, for different k-cuts in the matter power spectrum.
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We present cosmological constraints from 2D weak gravitational lensing by the large-scale structure in the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) which spans 154 deg2 in five ...optical bands. Using accurate photometric redshifts and measured shapes for 4.2 million galaxies between redshifts of 0.2 and 1.3, we compute the 2D cosmic shear correlation function over angular scales ranging between 0.8 and 350 arcmin. Using non-linear models of the dark-matter power spectrum, we constrain cosmological parameters by exploring the parameter space with Population Monte Carlo sampling. The best constraints from lensing alone are obtained for the small-scale density-fluctuations amplitude σ8 scaled with the total matter density Ωm. For a flat Λcold dark matter (ΛCDM) model we obtain σ8(Ωm/0.27)0.6 = 0.79 ± 0.03.
We combine the CFHTLenS data with 7-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP7), baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO): SDSS-III (BOSS) and a Hubble Space Telescope
distance-ladder prior on the Hubble constant to get joint constraints. For a flat ΛCDM model, we find Ωm = 0.283 ± 0.010 and σ8 = 0.813 ± 0.014. In the case of a curved wCDM universe, we obtain Ωm = 0.27 ± 0.03, σ8 = 0.83 ± 0.04, w
0 = −1.10 ± 0.15 and ΩK = 0.006+ 0.006
− 0.004.
We calculate the Bayesian evidence to compare flat and curved ΛCDM and dark-energy CDM models. From the combination of all four probes, we find models with curvature to be at moderately disfavoured with respect to the flat case. A simple dark-energy model is indistinguishable from ΛCDM. Our results therefore do not necessitate any deviations from the standard cosmological model.
The limits of cosmic shear Kitching, Thomas D; Alsing, Justin; Heavens, Alan F ...
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
08/2017, Volume:
469, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
In this paper, we discuss the commonly used limiting cases, or approximations, for two-point cosmic-shear statistics. We discuss the most prominent assumptions in this statistic: the ...flat-sky (small angle limit), the Limber (Bessel-to-delta function limit) and the Hankel transform (large ℓ-mode limit) approximations; that the vast majority of cosmic-shear results to date have used simultaneously. We find that the combined effect of these approximations can suppress power by ≳ 1 per cent on scales of ℓ ≲ 40. A fully non-approximated cosmic-shear study should use a spherical-sky, non-Limber-approximated power spectrum analysis and a transform involving Wigner small-d matrices in place of the Hankel transform. These effects, unaccounted for, would constitute at least 11 per cent of the total budget for systematic effects for a power spectrum analysis of a Euclid-like experiment; but they are unnecessary.
Galaxy Alignments: An Overview Joachimi, Benjamin; Cacciato, Marcello; Kitching, Thomas D. ...
Space science reviews,
11/2015, Volume:
193, Issue:
1-4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The alignments between galaxies, their underlying matter structures, and the cosmic web constitute vital ingredients for a comprehensive understanding of gravity, the nature of matter, and structure ...formation in the Universe. We provide an overview on the state of the art in the study of these alignment processes and their observational signatures, aimed at a non-specialist audience. The development of the field over the past one hundred years is briefly reviewed. We also discuss the impact of galaxy alignments on measurements of weak gravitational lensing, and discuss avenues for making theoretical and observational progress over the coming decade.
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DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
We introduce the Generalised Lensing and Shear Spectra (GLaSS) code which is available for download from https://github.com/astro-informatics/GLaSS It is a fast and flexible public code, written in ...Python, that computes generalized spherical cosmic shear spectra. The commonly used tomographic and spherical Bessel lensing spectra come as built-in run-mode options. GLaSS is integrated into the Cosmosis modular cosmological pipeline package. We outline several computational choices that accelerate the computation of cosmic shear power spectra. Using GLaSS, we test whether the assumption that using the lensing and projection kernels for a spatially-flat universe-in a universe with a small amount of spatial curvature-negligibly impacts the lensing spectrum. We refer to this assumption as the spatially-flat universe approximation, that has been implicitly assumed in all cosmic shear studies to date. We confirm that the spatially-flat universe approximation has a negligible impact on Stage IV cosmic shear experiments.
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The significant increase in precision that will be achieved by Stage IV cosmic shear surveys means that several currently used theoretical approximations may cease to be valid. An additional layer of ...complexity arises from the fact that many of these approximations are interdependent; the procedure to correct for one involves making another. Two such approximations that must be relaxed for upcoming experiments are the reduced shear approximation and the effect of neglecting magnification bias. Accomplishing this involves the calculation of the convergence bispectrum; typically subject to the Limber approximation. In this work, we compute the post-Limber convergence bispectrum, and the post-Limber reduced shear and magnification bias corrections to the angular power spectrum for a Euclid-like survey. We find that the Limber approximation significantly overestimates the bispectrum when any side of the bispectrum triangle, ℓi < 60 . However, the resulting changes in the reduced shear and magnification bias corrections are well below the sample variance for ℓ ≤ 5000 . We also compute a worst-case scenario for the additional biases on w0wa CDM cosmological parameters that result from the difference between the post-Limber and Limber approximated forms of the corrections. These further demonstrate that the reduced shear and magnification bias corrections can safely be treated under the Limber approximation for upcoming surveys.
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