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Wide-field lensing mass maps from Dark Energy Survey science verification data: Methodology and detailed analysis

Vikram, V; Chang, C; Jain, B; Bacon, D; Amara, A; Becker, MR; Bernstein, G; ... Weller, J; + view all (2015) Wide-field lensing mass maps from Dark Energy Survey science verification data: Methodology and detailed analysis. Physical Review D , 92 , Article 022006. 10.1103/PhysRevD.92.022006. Green open access

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Abstract

Weak gravitational lensing allows one to reconstruct the spatial distribution of the projected mass density across the sky. These “mass maps” provide a powerful tool for studying cosmology as they probe both luminous and dark matter. In this paper, we present a weak lensing mass map reconstructed from shear measurements in a 139 deg2 area from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) science verification data. We compare the distribution of mass with that of the foreground distribution of galaxies and clusters. The overdensities in the reconstructed map correlate well with the distribution of optically detected clusters. We demonstrate that candidate superclusters and voids along the line of sight can be identified, exploiting the tight scatter of the cluster photometric redshifts. We cross-correlate the mass map with a foreground magnitude-limited galaxy sample from the same data. Our measurement gives results consistent with mock catalogs from N-body simulations that include the primary sources of statistical uncertainties in the galaxy, lensing, and photo-z catalogs. The statistical significance of the cross-correlation is at the 6.8σ level with 20 arcminute smoothing. We find that the contribution of systematics to the lensing mass maps is generally within measurement uncertainties. In this work, we analyze less than 3% of the final area that will be mapped by the DES; the tools and analysis techniques developed in this paper can be applied to forthcoming larger data sets from the survey.

Type: Article
Title: Wide-field lensing mass maps from Dark Energy Survey science verification data: Methodology and detailed analysis
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.92.022006
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.92.022006
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Science & Technology, Physical Sciences, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Physics, Particles & Fields, Physics, MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD, SHEAR MEASUREMENT, GALAXY DISTRIBUTIONS, PEAK STATISTICS, CLUSTER SURVEYS, DATA RELEASE, NOISE BIAS, SDSS-III, WEAK, CONSTRAINTS
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1488759
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