Dark Matter Structures In The Deep Lens Survey

Abstract

We present a regularized maximum likelihood weak lensing reconstruction of the Deep Lens Survey F2 field (4 deg^2). High signal-to-noise ratio peaks in our lensing significance map appear to be associated with possible projected filamentary structures. The largest apparent structure extends for over a degree in the field and has contributions from known optical clusters at three redshifts (z ~ 0.3, 0.43, 0.5). Noise in weak lensing reconstructions is known to potentially cause "false positives"; we use Monte Carlo techniques to estimate the contamination in our sample, and find that 10-25% of the peaks are expected to be false detections. For significant lensing peaks we estimate the total signal-to-noise ratio of detection using a method that accounts for pixel-to-pixel correlations in our reconstruction. We also report the detection of a candidate relative underdensity in the F2 field with a total signal-to-noise ratio of ~ 5.5.