Weighing the Cosmological Energy Contents with Weak Gravitational Lensing

Abstract

Bernardeau et al. (1997), using perturbation theory, showed that the skewness of the large-scale lensing-convergence, or projected mass density, could be used to constrain $Ω_m$, the matter content of the universe. On the other hand, deep weak-lensing field surveys in the near future will likely measure the convergence on small angular scales (< 10 arcmin.), where the signal will be dominated by highly nonlinear fluctuations. We develop a method to compute the small-scale convergence skewness, using a prescription for the highly nonlinear three-point function developed by Scoccimarro and Frieman (1998). This method gives predictions that agree well with existing results from ray-tracing N-body simulations, but is significantly faster, allowing the exploration of a large number of models. We demonstrate that the small-scale convergence skewness is insensitive to the shape and normalization of the primordial (CDM-type) power spectrum, making it dependent almost entirely on the cosmological energy contents, through their influence on the global geometrical distances and fluctuation growth rate. Moreover, nonlinear clustering appears to enhance the differences between predictions of the convergence skewness for a range of models. Hence, in addition to constraining $Ω_m$, the small-scale convergence skewness from future deep several- degree-wide surveys can be used to differentiate between curvature dominated and cosmological constant ($Λ$) dominated models, as well as to constrain the equation of state of a quintessence component, thereby distinguishing $Λ$ from quintessence as well. Finally, our method can be easily generalized to other measures such as aperture mass statistics.