Christopher Duncan

Abstract:

Aims. We derived galaxy colour selections from Euclid and ground-based photometry, aiming to accurately define background galaxy samples in cluster weak-lensing analyses. These selections have been implemented in the Euclid data analysis pipelines for galaxy clusters. Methods. Given any set of photometric bands, we developed a method for the calibration of optimal galaxy colour selections that maximises the selection completeness, given a threshold on purity. Such colour selections are expressed as a function of the lens redshift. Results. We calibrated galaxy selections using simulated ground-based griz and EuclidY$_{E}$J$_{E}$H$_{E}$ photometry. Both selections produce a purity higher than 97%. The griz selection completeness ranges from 30% to 84% in the lens redshift range z$_{l}$ ∈ [0.2, 0.8]. With the full grizY$_{E}$J$_{E}$H$_{E}$ selection, the completeness improves by up to 25 percentage points, and the z$_{l}$ range extends up to z$_{l}$ = 1.5. The calibrated colour selections are stable to changes in the sample limiting magnitudes and redshift, and the selection based on griz bands provides excellent results on real external datasets. Furthermore, the calibrated selections provide stable results using alternative photometric aperture definitions obtained from different ground-based telescopes. The griz selection is also purer at high redshift and more complete at low redshift compared to colour selections found in the literature. We find excellent agreement in terms of purity and completeness between the analysis of an independent, simulated Euclid galaxy catalogue and our calibration sample, except for galaxies at high redshifts, for which we obtain up to 50 percentage points higher completeness. The combination of colour and photo-z selections applied to simulated Euclid data yields up to 95% completeness, while the purity decreases down to 92% at high z$_{l}$. We show that the calibrated colour selections provide robust results even when observations from a single band are missing from the ground-based data. Finally, we show that colour selections do not disrupt the shear calibration for stage III surveys. The first Euclid data releases will provide further insights into the impact of background selections on the shear calibration

Abstract:

The statistical distribution and evolution of key properties of active galactic nuclei (AGN), such as their accretion rate, mass, and spin, remains a subject of open debate in astrophysics. The ESA Euclid space mission, launched on July 1 2023, promises a breakthrough in this field. We create detailed mock catalogues of AGN spectra from the rest-frame near-infrared down to the ultraviolet – including emission lines – to simulate what Euclid will observe for both obscured (type 2) and unobscured (type 1) AGN. We concentrate on the red grisms of the NISP instrument, which will be used for the wide-field survey, opening a new window for spectroscopic AGN studies in the near-infrared. We quantify the efficiency in the redshift determination as well as in retrieving the emission line flux of the Hα+[N II] complex, as Euclid is mainly focused on this emission line, given that it is expected to be the brightest one in the probed redshift range. Spectroscopic redshifts are measured for 83% of the simulated AGN in the interval where the Hα is visible (i.e. 0.89 <  z <  1.83 at a line flux of > 2 × 10−16 erg s−1 cm−2, encompassing the peak of AGN activity at z ≃ 1 − 1.5) within the spectral coverage of the red grism. Outside this redshift range, the measurement efficiency decreases significantly. Overall, a spectroscopic redshift iscorrectly determined for about 90% of type 2 AGN down to an emission line flux of roughly 3 × 10−16 erg s−1 cm−2, and for type 1 AGN down to 8.5 × 10−16 erg s−1 cm−2. Recovered values for black hole mass show a small offset with respect to the input values by about 10%, but the agreement is good overall. With such a high spectroscopic coverage at z <  2, we will be able to measure AGN demography, scaling relations, and clustering from the epoch of the peak of AGN activity down to the present-day Universe for hundreds of thousands of AGN with homogeneous spectroscopic information