No Arabic abstract
Galaxy-galaxy lensing is rapidly becoming one of the most promising means to accurately measure the average relation between galaxy properties and halo mass. In order to obtain a signal of sufficient signal-to-noise, one needs to stack many lens galaxies according to their property of interest, such as luminosity or stellar mass. Since such a stack consists of both central and satellite galaxies, which contribute very different lensing signals, the resulting shear measurements can be difficult to interpret. In the past, galaxy-galaxy lensing studies have either completely ignored this problem, have applied rough isolation criteria in an attempt to preferentially select `central galaxies, or have tried to model the contribution of satellites explicitely. However, if one is able to {it a priori} split the galaxy population in central and satellite galaxies, one can measure their lensing signals separately. This not only allows a much cleaner measurement of the relation between halo mass and their galaxy populations, but also allows a direct measurement of the sub-halo masses around satellite galaxies. In this paper, we use a realistic mock galaxy redshift survey to show that galaxy groups, properly selected from large galaxy surveys, can be used to accurately split the galaxy population in centrals and satellites. Stacking the resulting centrals according to their group mass, estimated from the total group luminosity, allows a remarkably accurate recovery of the masses and density profiles of their host haloes. In addition, stacking the corresponding satellite galaxies according to their projected distance from the group center yields a lensing signal that can be used to accurate measure the masses of both sub-haloes and host haloes. (Abridged)
Weak gravitational lensing studies of galaxy clusters often assume a spherical cluster model to simplify the analysis, but some recent studies have suggested this simplifying assumption may result in large biases in estimated cluster masses and concentration values, since clusters are expected to exhibit triaxiality. Several such analyses have, however, quoted expressions for the spatial derivatives of the lensing potential in triaxial models, which are open to misinterpretation. In this paper, we give a clear description of weak lensing by triaxial NFW galaxy clusters and also present an efficient and robust method to model these clusters and obtain parameter estimates. By considering four highly triaxial NFW galaxy clusters, we re-examine the impact of simplifying spherical assumptions and found that while the concentration estimates are largely unbiased except in one of our traixial NFW simulated clusters, for which the concentration is only slightly biased, the masses are significantly biased, by up to 40%, for all the clusters we analysed. Moreover, we find that such assumptions can lead to the erroneous conclusion that some substructure is present in the galaxy clusters or, even worse, that multiple galaxy clusters are present in the field. Our cluster fitting method also allows one to answer the question of whether a given cluster exhibits triaxiality or a simple spherical model is good enough.
We describe first results of a project to create weak lensing mass maps for a complete, X-ray luminosity-limited sample of 19 nearby (z < 0.1) southern galaxy clusters scheduled for Sunyaev-Zeldovich observations by the Viper Telescope at the South Pole. We have collected data on 1/3 of the sample and present motivation for the project as well as projected mass maps of two clusters.
Selected results on estimating cosmological parameters from simulated weak lensing data with noise are presented. Numerical simulations of ray tracing through N-body simulations have been used to generate shear and convergence maps due to lensing by large-scale structure. Noise due to the intrinsic ellipticities of a finite number of galaxies is added. In this contribution we present our main results on estimation of the power spectrum and density parameter Omega from weak lensing data on several degree sized fields. We also show that there are striking morphological differences in the weak lensing maps of clusters of galaxies formed in models with different values of Omega.
We present the K-band luminosity-halo mass relation, $L_{K,500}-M_{500,WL}$, for a subsample of 20 of the 100 brightest clusters in the XXL Survey observed with WIRCam at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). For the first time, we have measured this relation via weak-lensing analysis down to $M_{500,WL} =3.5 times 10^{13},M_odot$. This allows us to investigate whether the slope of the $L_K-M$ relation is different for groups and clusters, as seen in other works. The clusters in our sample span a wide range in mass, $M_{500,WL} =0.35-12.10 times 10^{14},M_odot$, at $0<z<0.6$. The K-band luminosity scales as $log_{10}(L_{K,500}/10^{12}L_odot) propto beta log_{10}(M_{500,WL}/10^{14}M_odot)$ with $beta = 0.85^{+0.35}_{-0.27}$ and an intrinsic scatter of $sigma_{lnL_K|M} =0.37^{+0.19}_{-0.17}$. Combining our sample with some clusters in the Local Cluster Substructure Survey (LoCuSS) present in the literature, we obtain a slope of $1.05^{+0.16}_{-0.14}$ and an intrinsic scatter of $0.14^{+0.09}_{-0.07}$. The flattening in the $L_K-M$ seen in previous works is not seen here and might be a result of a bias in the mass measurement due to assumptions on the dynamical state of the systems. We also study the richness-mass relation and find that group-sized halos have more galaxies per unit halo mass than massive clusters. However, the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) in low-mass systems contributes a greater fraction to the total cluster light than BCGs do in massive clusters; the luminosity gap between the two brightest galaxies is more prominent for group-sized halos. This result is a natural outcome of the hierarchical growth of structures, where massive galaxies form and gain mass within low-mass groups and are ultimately accreted into more massive clusters to become either part of the BCG or one of the brighter galaxies. [Abridged]