Martin Eriksen

Gravitational lensing analysis of the Kilo-Degree Survey

The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is a multi-band imaging survey designed for cosmological studies from weak lensing and photometric redshifts. It uses the European Southern Observatory VLT Survey Telescope with its wide-field camera OmegaCAM. KiDS images are taken in four filters similar to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ugri bands. The best seeing time is reserved for deep r-band observations. The median 5σ limiting AB magnitude is 24.9 and the median seeing is below 0.7 arcsec. Initial KiDS observations have concentrated on the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) regions near the celestial equator, where extensive, highly complete redshift catalogues are available. A total of 109 survey tiles, 1 square degree each, form the basis of the first set of lensing analyses of halo properties of GAMA galaxies. Nine galaxies per square arcminute enter the lensing analysis, for an effective inverse shear variance of 69 arcmin-2. Accounting for the shape measurement weight, the median redshift of the sources is 0.53. KiDS data processing follows two parallel tracks, one optimized for weak lensing measurement and one for accurate matched-aperture photometry (for photometric redshifts). This technical paper describes the lensing and photometric redshift measurements (including a detailed description of the Gaussian aperture and photometry pipeline), summarizes the data quality and presents extensive tests for systematic errors that might affect the lensing analyses. We also provide first demonstrations of the suitability of the data for cosmological measurements, and describe our blinding procedure for preventing confirmation bias in the scientific analyses. The KiDS catalogues presented in this paper are released to the community through http://kids.strw.leidenuniv.nl.

Combining spectroscopic and photometric surveys using angular cross-correlations – I. Algorithm and modelling

Weak lensing (WL) clustering is studied using 2D (angular) coordinates, while redshift space distortions (RSD) and baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) use 3D coordinates, which requires a model dependent conversion of angles and redshifts into comoving distances. This is the first paper of a series, which explore modelling multi-tracer galaxy clustering (of WL, BAO and RSD), using only angular (2D) cross-correlations in thin redshift bins. This involves evaluating many thousands cross-correlations, each a multidimensional integral, which is computationally demanding. We present a new algorithm that performs these calculations as matrix operations. Nearby narrow redshift bins are intrinsically correlated, which can be used to recover the full (radial) 3D information. We show that the Limber approximation does not work well for this task. In the exact calculation, both the clustering amplitude and the RSD effect increase when decreasing the redshift bin width. For narrow bins, the cross-correlations has a larger BAO peak than the auto-correlation because smaller scales are filtered out by the radial redshift separation. Moreover, the BAO peak shows a second (ghost) peak, shifted to smaller angles. We explore how WL, RSD and BAO contribute to the cross-correlations as a function of the redshift bin width and present a first exploration of non-linear effects and signal-to-noise ratio on these quantities. This illustrates that the new approach to clustering analysis provides new insights and is potentially viable in practice.

Statistical uncertainties and systematic errors in weak lensing mass estimates of galaxy clusters

Upcoming and ongoing large area weak lensing surveys will also discover large samples of galaxy clusters. Accurate and precise masses of galaxy clusters are of major importance for cosmology, for example, in establishing well calibrated observational halo mass functions for comparison with cosmological predictions. We investigate the level of statistical uncertainties and sources of systematic errors expected for weak lensing mass estimates. Future surveys that will cover large areas on the sky, such as Euclid or LSST and to lesser extent DES, will provide the largest weak lensing cluster samples with the lowest level of statistical noise regarding ensembles of galaxy clusters. However, the expected low level of statistical uncertainties requires us to scrutinize various sources of systematic errors. In particular, we investigate the bias due to cluster member galaxies which are erroneously treated as background source galaxies due to wrongly assigned photometric redshifts. We find that this effect is significant when referring to stacks of galaxy clusters. Finally, we study the bias due to miscentring, i.e., the displacement between any observationally defined cluster centre and the true minimum of its gravitational potential. The impact of this bias might be significant with respect to the statistical uncertainties. However, complementary future missions such as eROSITA will allow us to define stringent priors on miscentring parameters which will mitigate this bias significantly.

Combining spectroscopic and photometric surveys using angular cross-correlations – II. Parameter constraints from different physical effects

Future spectroscopic and photometric surveys will measure accurate positions and shapes of an increasing number of galaxies. In the previous paper of this series we studied the effects of Redshift Space Distortions (RSD), baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and Weak gravitational Lensing (WL) using angular cross-correlation. Here, we provide a new forecast that explores the contribution of including different observables, physical effects (galaxy bias, WL, RSD, BAO) and approximations (non-linearities, Limber approximation, covariance between probes). The radial information is included by using the cross-correlation of separate narrow redshift bins. For the auto correlation the separation of galaxy pairs is mostly transverse, while the cross-correlations also includes a radial component. We study how this information adds to our figure of merit (FoM), which includes the dark energy equation of state

Cross-correlating spectroscopic and photometric galaxy surveys

w(z)

Combining spectroscopic and photometric surveys: Same or different sky?

and the growth history, parameterized by

Combining spectroscopic and photometric surveys using angular cross-correlations – III. Galaxy bias and stochasticity

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Implications of a wavelength-dependent PSF for weak lensing measurements

. We show that the Limber approximation and galaxy bias are the most critical ingredients to the modelling of correlations. Adding WL increases our FoM by 4.8, RSD by 2.1 and BAO by 1.3. We also explore how overlapping surveys perform under the different assumption and for different figures of merit. Our qualitative conclusions depend on the survey choices and scales included, but we find some clear tendencies that highlight the importance of combining different probes and can be used to guide and optimise survey strategies.

VizieR Online Data Catalog: KiDS-ESO-DR2 multi-band source catalog (de Jong+, 2015)

Does photometric and spectroscopic survey benefit from overlapping areas? The photometric survey measures 2D Weak Lensing (WL) information from galaxy shape distortions. On the other hand, the higher redshift precision of an spectroscopic survey allows measurements of redshift space distortions (RSD) and baryonic accustic oscillations (BAO) from 3D galaxy counts. The two surveys are combined using 2D-correlations, using sufficiently narrow bins to capture the radial information. This poster present effects of RSD and intrinsic correlations between narrow redshift bins. In understanding how the effects affects cosmological constrains, we first define two stage-IV and then present forecast for various configurations. When surveys overlap, they benefit from additional cross-correlations and sample variance cancellations from overlapping volumes. For a combined dark energy and growth history figure of merit, the result increase 50% for overlapping surveys, corresponding to 30% larger area.