Lance Miller

Abstract:

In this paper we present results of applying the shear-ratio method to the RCSLenS data. The method takes the ratio of the mean of the weak lensing tangential shear signal about galaxy clusters, averaged over all clusters of the same redshift, in multiple background redshift bins. In taking a ratio the mass-dependency of the shear signal is cancelled-out leaving a statistic that is dependent on the geometric part of the lensing kernel only. We apply this method to 535 clusters and measure a cosmology-independent distance-redshift relation to redshifts z~1. In combination with Planck data the method lifts the degeneracies in the CMB measurements, resulting in cosmological parameter constraints of OmegaM=0.31 +/- 0.10 and w0 = -1.02 +/- 0.37, for a flat wCDM cosmology.

Abstract:

The intrinsic alignments of galaxies are recognised as a contaminant to weak gravitational lensing measurements. In this work, we study the alignment of galaxy shapes and spins at low redshift ($z\sim 0.5$) in Horizon-AGN, an adaptive-mesh-refinement hydrodynamical cosmological simulation box of 100 Mpc/h a side with AGN feedback implementation. We find that spheroidal galaxies in the simulation show a tendency to be aligned radially towards over-densities in the dark matter density field and other spheroidals. This trend is in agreement with observations, but the amplitude of the signal depends strongly on how shapes are measured and how galaxies are selected in the simulation. Disc galaxies show a tendency to be oriented tangentially around spheroidals in three-dimensions. While this signal seems suppressed in projection, this does not guarantee that disc alignments can be safely ignored in future weak lensing surveys. The shape alignments of luminous galaxies in Horizon-AGN are in agreement with observations and other simulation works, but we find less alignment for lower luminosity populations. We also characterize the systematics of galaxy shapes in the simulation and show that they can be safely neglected when measuring the correlation of the density field and galaxy ellipticities.