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2007ApJ...669...10F - Astrophys. J., 669, 10-20 (2007/November-1)

Intrinsic alignments of galaxies and their effects on weak-lensing detections of mass concentrations.

FAN Z.-H.

Abstract (from CDS):

In this paper we analyze the number counts of false peaks resulting from intrinsic ellipticities in lensing convergence maps, including the alignment of source galaxies. The full noise variance in convergence κ-maps can be written as σ20=σ20ran+σ20corr, where σ20ran is the noise contributed from randomly oriented source galaxies and σ20corr denotes the additional noise from intrinsic alignments. However, it is observationally difficult to measure σ20corr, and usually only σ20ran can be estimated in weak-lensing observations. Thus, the observational signal-to-noise ratio is often defined with respect to σ0ran, which we denote as νran. The true signal-to-noise ratio ν in terms of σ0is then ν=νran/(1+σ20corr/σ20ran)1/2. Given a detection threshold on νran, a larger value of σ20corr/σ20ran leads to a lower threshold on ν and therefore a larger expected number of false peaks. With σ20corr/σ20ran∼10%, the average number of false peaks with νran≥3.5 nearly doubles compared to that without considering the alignment, and for νran≥5, the number is tripled. As a result, the efficiency of weak-lensing cluster detection declines significantly. The increase of the number of false peaks also affects the likelihood of the existence of dark clumps. On the other hand, if one can observationally distinguish false peaks and true peaks, the number of false peaks can be used to tightly constrain the level of intrinsic alignments. The CFHTLS Deep survey's 3.61 deg2 lensing observations and follow-up studies find that 5 out of the 14 peaks with νran>3.5 are likely to be false peaks, giving rise to a constraint of σ20corr≤1.6x10–5 (1 σ) at the angular scale of 1' for galaxies at redshift z∼1. The corresponding limit on the correlation of intrinsic ellipticities is 3.2x10–5.

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Journal keyword(s): Cosmology: Theory - Cosmology: Dark Matter - Galaxies: Clusters: General - Cosmology: Gravitational Lensing - Cosmology: Large-Scale Structure of Universe

Simbad objects: 1

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