Abstract
We present Magellan/IMACS spectroscopy of the recently discovered Milky Way satellite Tucana III (Tuc III). We identify 26 member stars in Tuc III from which we measure a mean radial ...velocity of
v
hel
= −102.3 ± 0.4 (stat.) ± 2.0 (sys.)
, a velocity dispersion of
, and a mean metallicity of
. The upper limit on the velocity dispersion is
σ
< 1.5
at 95.5% confidence, and the corresponding upper limit on the mass within the half-light radius of Tuc III is 9.0 × 10
4
M
⊙
. We cannot rule out mass-to-light ratios as large as 240
M
⊙
/
L
⊙
for Tuc III, but much lower mass-to-light ratios that would leave the system baryon-dominated are also allowed. We measure an upper limit on the metallicity spread of the stars in Tuc III of 0.19 dex at 95.5% confidence. Tuc III has a smaller metallicity dispersion and likely a smaller velocity dispersion than any known dwarf galaxy, but a larger size and lower surface brightness than any known globular cluster. Its metallicity is also much lower than those of the clusters with similar luminosity. We therefore tentatively suggest that Tuc III is the tidally stripped remnant of a dark matter-dominated dwarf galaxy, but additional precise velocity and metallicity measurements will be necessary for a definitive classification. If Tuc III is indeed a dwarf galaxy, it is one of the closest external galaxies to the Sun. Because of its proximity, the most luminous stars in Tuc III are quite bright, including one star at
V
= 15.7 that is the brightest known member star of an ultra-faint satellite.
We present a measurement of the Hubble constant H0 using the gravitational wave (GW) event GW190814, which resulted from the coalescence of a 23 M black hole with a 2.6 M compact object, as a ...standard siren. No compelling electromagnetic counterpart has been identified for this event; thus our analysis accounts for thousands of potential host galaxies within a statistical framework. The redshift information is obtained from the photometric redshift (photo-z) catalog from the Dark Energy Survey. The luminosity distance is provided by the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave sky map. Since this GW event has the second-smallest localization volume after GW170817, GW190814 is likely to provide the best constraint on cosmology from a single standard siren without identifying an electromagnetic counterpart. Our analysis uses photo-z probability distribution functions and corrects for photo-z biases. We also reanalyze the binary black hole GW170814 within this updated framework. We explore how our findings impact the H0 constraints from GW170817, the only GW merger associated with a unique host galaxy. From a combination of GW190814, GW170814, and GW170817, our analysis yields (68% highest-density interval, HDI) for a prior in H0 uniform between . The addition of GW190814 and GW170814 to GW170817 improves the 68% HDI from GW170817 alone by ∼18%, showing how well-localized mergers without counterparts can provide a significant contribution to standard siren measurements, provided that a complete galaxy catalog is available at the location of the event.
Abstract
We present the second public data release (DR2) from the DECam Local Volume Exploration survey (DELVE). DELVE DR2 combines new DECam observations with archival DECam data from the Dark ...Energy Survey, the DECam Legacy Survey, and other DECam community programs. DELVE DR2 consists of ∼160,000 exposures that cover >21,000 deg
2
of the high-Galactic-latitude (∣
b
∣ > 10°) sky in four broadband optical/near-infrared filters (
g
,
r
,
i
,
z
). DELVE DR2 provides point-source and automatic aperture photometry for ∼2.5 billion astronomical sources with a median 5
σ
point-source depth of
g
= 24.3,
r
= 23.9,
i
= 23.5, and
z
= 22.8 mag. A region of ∼17,000 deg
2
has been imaged in all four filters, providing four-band photometric measurements for ∼618 million astronomical sources. DELVE DR2 covers more than 4 times the area of the previous DELVE data release and contains roughly 5 times as many astronomical objects. DELVE DR2 is publicly available via the NOIRLab Astro Data Lab science platform.
ABSTRACT
We present and characterize the galaxy shape catalogue from the first 3 yr of Dark Energy Survey (DES) observations, over an effective area of 4143 deg2 of the southern sky. We describe our ...data analysis process and our self-calibrating shear measurement pipeline metacalibration, which builds and improves upon the pipeline used in the DES Year 1 analysis in several aspects. The DES Year 3 weak-lensing shape catalogue consists of 100 204 026 galaxies, measured in the riz bands, resulting in a weighted source number density of neff = 5.59 gal arcmin−2 and corresponding shape noise σe = 0.261. We perform a battery of internal null tests on the catalogue, including tests on systematics related to the point spread function (PSF) modelling, spurious catalogue B-mode signals, catalogue contamination, and galaxy properties.
ABSTRACT
Clusters of galaxies trace the most non-linear peaks in the cosmic density field. The weak gravitational lensing of background galaxies by clusters can allow us to infer their masses. ...However, galaxies associated with the local environment of the cluster can also be intrinsically aligned due to the local tidal gradient, contaminating any cosmology derived from the lensing signal. We measure this intrinsic alignment in Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 1 redMaPPer clusters. We find evidence of a non-zero mean radial alignment of galaxies within clusters between redshifts 0.1–0.7. We find a significant systematic in the measured ellipticities of cluster satellite galaxies that we attribute to the central galaxy flux and other intracluster light. We attempt to correct this signal, and fit a simple model for intrinsic alignment amplitude (AIA) to the measurement, finding AIA = 0.15 ± 0.04, when excluding data near the edge of the cluster. We find a significantly stronger alignment of the central galaxy with the cluster dark matter halo at low redshift and with higher richness and central galaxy absolute magnitude (proxies for cluster mass). This is an important demonstration of the ability of large photometric data sets like DES to provide direct constraints on the intrinsic alignment of galaxies within clusters. These measurements can inform improvements to small-scale modelling and simulation of the intrinsic alignment of galaxies to help improve the separation of the intrinsic alignment signal in weak lensing studies.
We present a cosmological analysis using the second and third moments of the weak lensing mass (convergence) maps from the first three years of data (Y3) data of the Dark Energy Survey. The survey ...spans an effective area of 4139 square degrees and uses the images of over 100 million galaxies to reconstruct the convergence field. The second moment of the convergence as a function of smoothing scale contains information similar to standard shear 2-point statistics. The third moment, or the skewness, contains additional non-Gaussian information. The data is analyzed in the context of the ΛCDM model, varying five cosmological parameters and 19 nuisance parameters modeling astrophysical and measurement systematics. Our modeling of the observables is completely analytical, and has been tested with simulations in our previous methodology study. We obtain a 1.7% measurement of the amplitude of fluctuations parameter S8≡σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5=0.784±0.013. The measurements are shown to be internally consistent across redshift bins, angular scales, and between second and third moments. In particular, the measured third moment is consistent with the expectation of gravitational clustering under the ΛCDM model. The addition of the third moment improves the constraints on S8 and Ωm by ∼15% and ∼25% compared to an analysis that only uses second moments. We compare our results with Planck constraints from the cosmic microwave background, finding a 2.2–2.8σ tension in the full parameter space, depending on the combination of moments considered. The third moment, independently, is in 2.8σ tension with Planck, and thus provides a cross-check on the analyses of 2-point correlations.
ABSTRACT
Galaxies and galaxy groups located along the line of sight towards gravitationally lensed quasars produce high-order perturbations of the gravitational potential at the lens position. When ...these perturbation are too large, they can induce a systematic error on H0 of a few per cent if the lens system is used for cosmological inference and the perturbers are not explicitly accounted for in the lens model. In this work, we present a detailed characterization of the environment of the lens system WFI 2033−4723 ($z_{\rm src} =\,$1.662, $z_{\rm lens}=\,$0.6575), one of the core targets of the H0LiCOW project for which we present cosmological inferences in a companion paper. We use the Gemini and ESO-Very Large telescopes to measure the spectroscopic redshifts of the brightest galaxies towards the lens, and use the ESO-MUSE integral field spectrograph to measure the velocity-dispersion of the lens ($\sigma _{\rm {los}}= 250^{+15}_{-21}$ km s−1) and of several nearby galaxies. In addition, we measure photometric redshifts and stellar masses of all galaxies down to i < 23 mag, mainly based on Dark Energy Survey imaging (DR1). Our new catalogue, complemented with literature data, more than doubles the number of known galaxy spectroscopic redshifts in the direct vicinity of the lens, expanding to 116 (64) the number of spectroscopic redshifts for galaxies separated by less than 3 arcmin (2 arcmin ) from the lens. Using the flexion-shift as a measure of the amplitude of the gravitational perturbation, we identify two galaxy groups and three galaxies that require specific attention in the lens models. The ESO MUSE data enable us to measure the velocity-dispersions of three of these galaxies. These results are essential for the cosmological inference analysis presented in Rusu et al.
ABSTRACT
Recent cosmic shear studies have reported discrepancies of up to 1σ on the parameter ${S_{8}=\sigma _{8}\sqrt{{\Omega _{\rm m}}/0.3}}$ between the analysis of shear power spectra and ...two-point correlation functions, derived from the same shear catalogues. It is not a priori clear whether the measured discrepancies are consistent with statistical fluctuations. In this paper, we investigate this issue in the context of the forthcoming analyses from the third year data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES Y3). We analyse DES Y3 mock catalogues from Gaussian simulations with a fast and accurate importance sampling pipeline. We show that the methodology for determining matching scale cuts in harmonic and real space is the key factor that contributes to the scatter between constraints derived from the two statistics. We compare the published scales cuts of the KiDS, Subaru-HSC, and DES surveys, and find that the correlation coefficients of posterior means range from over 80 per cent for our proposed cuts, down to 10 per cent for cuts used in the literature. We then study the interaction between scale cuts and systematic uncertainties arising from multiple sources: non-linear power spectrum, baryonic feedback, intrinsic alignments, uncertainties in the point spread function, and redshift distributions. We find that, given DES Y3 characteristics and proposed cuts, these uncertainties affect the two statistics similarly; the differential biases are below a third of the statistical uncertainty, with the largest biases arising from intrinsic alignment and baryonic feedback. While this work is aimed at DES Y3, the tools developed can be applied to Stage-IV surveys where statistical errors will be much smaller.
We report upon the follow-up of 34 candidate lensed quasars found in the Dark Energy Survey using NTT EFOSC, Magellan-IMACS, KECK-ESI, and SOAR-SAMI. These candidates were selected by a combination ...of double component fitting, morphological assessment, and colour analysis. Most systems followed up are indeed composed of at least one quasar image and 13 with two or more quasar images: two lenses, four projected binaries, and seven nearly identical quasar pairs (NIQs). The two systems confirmed as genuine gravitationally lensed quasars are one quadruple at zs = 1.713 and one double at zs = 1.515. Lens modelling of these two systems reveals that both systems require very little contribution from the environment to reproduce the image configuration. Nevertheless, small flux anomalies can be observed in one of the images of the quad. Further observations of nine inconclusive systems (including seven NIQs) will allow to confirm (or not) their gravitational lens nature.
We present time-delay measurements for the new quadruple imaged quasar DES J0408−5354, the first quadruple imaged quasar found in the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Our result is made possible by ...implementing a new observational strategy using almost daily observations with the MPIA 2.2 m telescope at La Silla observatory and deep exposures reaching a signal-to-noise ratio of about 1000 per quasar image. This data qualityallows us to catch small photometric variations (a few mmag rms) of the quasar, acting on temporal scales much shorter than microlensing, and hence making the time delay measurement very robust against microlensing. In only seven months we very accurately measured one of the time delays in DES J0408−5354: Δt(AB) = −112.1 ± 2.1 days (1.8%) using only the MPIA 2.2 m data. In combination with data taken with the 1.2 m Euler Swiss telescope, we also measured two delays involving the D component of the system Δt(AD) = −155.5 ± 12.8 days (8.2%) and Δt(BD) = −42.4 ± 17.6 days (41%), where all the error bars include systematics. Turning these time delays into cosmological constraints will require deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging or ground-based adaptive optics (AO), and information on the velocity field of the lensing galaxy.
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