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Register a new userCFHTLenS tomographic weak lensing: Quantifying accurate redshift distributions
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The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) comprises deep multi-colour (u*griz) photometry spanning 154 square degrees, with accurate photometric redshifts and shape measurements. We demonstrate that the redshift probability distribution function summed over galaxies provides an accurate representation of the galaxy redshift distribution accounting for random and catastrophic errors for galaxies with best fitting photometric redshifts z_p < 1.3. We present cosmological constraints using tomographic weak gravitational lensing by large-scale structure. We use two broad redshift bins 0.5 < z_p <= 0.85 and 0.85 < z_p <= 1.3 free of intrinsic alignment contamination, and measure the shear correlation function on angular scales in the range ~1-40 arcmin. We show that the problematic redshift scaling of the shear signal, found in previous CFHTLS data analyses, does not afflict the CFHTLenS data. For a flat Lambda-CDM model and a fixed matter density Omega_m=0.27, we find the normalisation of the matter power spectrum sigma_8=0.771 pm 0.041. When combined with cosmic microwave background data (WMAP7), baryon acoustic oscillation data (BOSS), and a prior on the Hubble constant from the HST distance ladder, we find that CFHTLenS improves the precision of the fully marginalised parameter estimates by an average factor of 1.5-2. Combining our results with the above cosmological probes, we find Omega_m=0.2762 pm 0.0074 and sigma_8=0.802 pm 0.013.
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Dark energy may be the first sign of new fundamental physics in the Universe, taking either a physical form or revealing a correction to Einsteinian gravity. Weak gravitational lensing and galaxy peculiar velocities provide complementary probes of General Relativity, and in combination allow us to test modified theories of gravity in a unique way. We perform such an analysis by combining measurements of cosmic shear tomography from the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) with the growth of structure from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey and the Six-degree-Field Galaxy Survey (6dFGS), producing the strongest existing joint constraints on the metric potentials that describe general theories of gravity. For scale-independent modifications to the metric potentials which evolve linearly with the effective dark energy density, we find present-day cosmological deviations in the Newtonian potential and curvature potential from the prediction of General Relativity to be (Delta Psi)/Psi = 0.05 pm 0.25 and (Delta Phi)/Phi = -0.05 pm 0.3 respectively (68 per cent CL).
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 zm =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<theta<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 BOSS, and a prior on the Hubble constant from the HST distance ladder. This leads to constraints on the normalisation of the matter power spectrum sigma_8 = 0.799 +/- 0.015 and the matter density parameter Omega_m = 0.271 +/- 0.010 for a flat Lambda CDM 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 Lambda CDM 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.
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 square degrees 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 sigma_8 scaled with the total matter density Omega_m. For a flat LambdaCDM model we obtain sigma_8(Omega_m/0.27)^0.6 = 0.79+-0.03. We combine the CFHTLenS data with WMAP7, BOSS and an HST distance-ladder prior on the Hubble constant to get joint constraints. For a flat LambdaCDM model, we find Omega_m = 0.283+-0.010 and sigma_8 = 0.813+-0.014. In the case of a curved wCDM universe, we obtain Omega_m = 0.27+-0.03, sigma_8 = 0.83+-0.04, w_0 = -1.10+-0.15 and Omega_K = 0.006+0.006-0.004. We calculate the Bayesian evidence to compare flat and curved LambdaCDM 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 LambdaCDM. Our results therefore do not necessitate any deviations from the standard cosmological model.
We use weak gravitational lensing to analyse the dark matter halos around satellite galaxies in galaxy groups in the CFHTLenS dataset. This dataset is derived from the CFHTLS-Wide survey, and encompasses 154 sq. deg of high-quality shape data. Using the photometric redshifts, we divide the sample of lens galaxies with stellar masses in the range 10^9 Msun to 10^10.5 Msun into those likely to lie in high-density environments (HDE) and those likely to lie in low-density environments (LDE). Through comparison with galaxy catalogues extracted from the Millennium Simulation, we show that the sample of HDE galaxies should primarily (~61%) consist of satellite galaxies in groups, while the sample of LDE galaxies should consist of mostly (~87%) non-satellite (field and central) galaxies. Comparing the lensing signals around samples of HDE and LDE galaxies matched in stellar mass, the lensing signal around HDE galaxies clearly shows a positive contribution from their host groups on their lensing signals at radii of ~500--1000 kpc, the typical separation between satellites and group centres. More importantly, the subhalos of HDE galaxies are less massive than those around LDE galaxies by a factor 0.65 +/- 0.12, significant at the 2.9 sigma level. A natural explanation is that the halos of satellite galaxies are stripped through tidal effects in the group environment. Our results are consistent with a typical tidal truncation radius of ~40 kpc.
We explore the effect of massive neutrinos on the weak lensing shear bispectrum using the Cosmological Massive Neutrino Simulations. We find that the primary effect of massive neutrinos is to suppress the amplitude of the bispectrum with limited effect on the bispectrum shape. The suppression of the bispectrum amplitude is a factor of two greater than the suppression of the small scale power-spectrum. For an LSST-like weak lensing survey that observes half of the sky with five tomographic redshift bins, we explore the constraining power of the bispectrum on three cosmological parameters: the sum of the neutrino mass $sum m_ u$, the matter density $Omega_m$ and the amplitude of primordial fluctuations $A_s$. Bispectrum measurements alone provide similar constraints to the power spectrum measurements and combining the two probes leads to significant improvements than using the latter alone. We find that the joint constraints tighten the power spectrum $95%$ constraints by $sim 32%$ for $sum m_ u$, $13%$ for $Omega_m$ and $57%$ for $A_s$ .
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