Cosmology

Abstract:

The high abundance of disc galaxies without a large central bulge challenges predictions of current hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation. We aim to shed light on the formation of these objects by studying the redshift and mass dependence of their intrinsic 3D shape distributions in the COSMOS galaxy survey below redshift z = 1.0. This distribution is inferred from the observed distribution of 2D shapes, using a reconstruction method which we test using hydrodynamic simulations. Our tests reveal a moderate bias for the inferred average disc circularity and relative thickness, but a large bias on the dispersion of these quantities. Applying the reconstruction method on COSMOS data, we find variations of the average disc circularity and relative thickness with redshift of around ∼1 per cent and ∼10 per cent, respectively, which is comparable to the error estimates on these quantities. The average relative disc thickness shows a significant mass dependence which can be accounted for by the scaling of disc radius with galaxy mass. We conclude that our data provides no evidence for a strong dependence of the average circularity and absolute thickness of disc-dominated galaxies on redshift and mass that is significant with respect to the statistical uncertainties in our analysis. These findings are expected in the absence of disruptive merging or feedback events that would affect galaxy shapes. They hence support a scenario where present-day discs form early ( z > 1.0) and subsequently undergo a tranquil evolution in isolation. However, more data and a better understanding of systematics are needed to reaffirm our results.

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.