ShapePipe: A new shape measurement pipeline and weak-lensing application to UNIONS/CFIS data
Astronomy & Astrophysics EDP Sciences 666 (2022) A162-A162
Abstract:
Context. The Ultraviolet Near-Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) is an ongoing collaboration that will provide the largest deep photometric survey of the northern sky in four optical bands to date. As part of this collaboration, the Canada-France Imaging Survey (CFIS) is observing r-band data with an average seeing of 0.65 arcsec, which is complete to magnitude 24.5 and thus ideal for weak-lensing studies. Aims. We perform the first weak-lensing analysis of CFIS r-band data over an area spanning 1700 deg2 of the sky. We create a catalogue with measured shapes for 40 million galaxies, corresponding to an effective density of 6.8 galaxies per square arcminute, and demonstrate a low level of systematic biases. This work serves as the basis for further cosmological studies that will use the full UNIONS survey of 4800 deg2 when completed. Methods. Here we present SHAPEPIPE, a newly developed weak-lensing pipeline. This pipeline makes use of state-of-the-art methods such as NGMIX for accurate galaxy shape measurement. Shear calibration is performed with metacalibration. We carry out extensive validation tests on the point spread function (PSF) and on the galaxy shapes. In addition, we create realistic image simulations to validate the estimated shear. Results. We quantify the PSF model accuracy and show that the level of systematics is low as measured by the PSF residuals. Their effect on the shear two-point correlation function is sub-dominant compared to the cosmological contribution on angular scales < 100′. The additive shear bias is below 5 × 10−4, and the residual multiplicative shear bias is at most 10−3 as measured on image simulations. Using complete orthogonal sets of E-/B-mode integrals (COSEBIs), we show that there are no significant B-modes present in second-order shear statistics. We present convergence maps and see clear correlations of the E-mode with known cluster positions. We measure the stacked tangential shear profile around Planck clusters at a significance higher than 4σ.EDGE: the puzzling ellipticity of Eridanus II's star cluster and its implications for dark matter at the heart of an ultra-faint dwarf
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 515:1 (2022) 185-200
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Constraining a late time transition of Geff using low-z galaxy survey data
Phys. Rev. D 106, 023526
Abstract:
It has recently been pointed out that a gravitational transition taking place at a recent redshift zt, reducing the effective gravitational constant Geff by about 10% for z>zt, has the potential to lead to a resolution of the Hubble tension if zt≲0.01. Since H(z)2∼Geff, such a transition would also lead to sharp change of the slope of the Hubble diagram at z=zt and a sharp decrease in the number of galaxies per redshift bin at zt. Here we attempt to impose constraints on such a transition by using two robust low-z redshift survey datasets (z<0.01), taken from the Six-degree Field Galaxy Survey (6dFGS) as well as the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS). In both surveys, we bin the data in redshift bins and focus on the number of galaxies in each bin (ΔN(zi)). We observe a peak in the distribution of galaxies near a distance of approximately 20 Mpc in both datasets. This feature could be attributed to galactic density fluctuations, to coherent peculiar velocities of galaxies or to an ultra late-time gravitational transition in the same era. In the context of the later scenario we show that this feature could have been induced by a sharp change of Geff by ΔGeff/Geff≃0.6 at zt≃0.005. Thus, in a conservative approach, this method can be used to impose constraints on a possible abrupt change of the gravitational constant taking place at very low redshifts.