arXiv subjects

Hekun Li

Publications and source records attributed to Hekun Li.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Dependence of halo properties on central-satellite magnitude gaps through weak lensing measurements

The magnitude gap between the central and satellite galaxies encodes information about the mass accretion history of a dark matter halo, and serves as a useful observational probe for the mass distribution in a halo. In this work, we perform the first weak lensing test of the connections between the magnitude gap and the halo profile. We measure the halo profiles of isolated central galaxies (ICGs) selected primarily from the SDSS Main Galaxy Sample. Halo mass and concentration are inferred by fitting stacked lensing profiles in bins of central luminosity, $L_\mathrm{c}$, and the central-satellite magnitude gap, $L_\mathrm{gap}$. We detect dependence on the magnitude gap in both halo properties. The dependence is the strongest in the ICG luminosity range of $10^{10.3}<L_\mathrm{c}[h^{-2}L_\odot]\leq 10^{10.7}$, where halos with smaller gaps have higher masses and lower concentrations. When $10^{10.7} <L_c[h^{-2}L_\odot] \leq 10^{11.1}$, however, no significant gap dependence is detected. In the range of $10^{9.9}<L_\mathrm{c}[h^{-2}L_\odot] \leq 10^{10.3}$, a disordering of the gap dependence is marginally observable. We compare the observational results with predictions by two lightcone catalogs built from the Illustris TNG300 and the Millennium simulations. The gap dependence in the two mock samples show overall consistency with observations, but neither matches them in all $L_\mathrm{c}$ bins to a quantitative level. We also compare the significance of the gap dependence on halo mass and concentration and find that our measurement prefers gap dependence in both parameters, while the halo mass dependence is preferred over the concentration if only one of the two dependencies is allowed.

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arXiv2025

Constraining $\sigma_8$ with Lensing Statistics in Low and High Density Regions

Lensing studies are typically carried out around high density regions, such as groups and clusters, where the lensing signals are significant and indicative of rich density structures. However, a more comprehensive test of the cosmological model should also include the lensing effect in low density regions. In this work, we incorporate the stacked weak lensing signals around the low density positions, alongside galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy-galaxy two point correlation function to perform a joint cosmological analysis on $\sigma_8$. The low density positions are constructed from the DR9 data release of the DESI legacy imaging survey, using galaxies with r-band absolute magnitude cut M$<$-21.5 and in the redshift range of 0.18$<$z$<$0.28. In doing so, we simultaneously parameterize photometric redshift errors and halo mass uncertainties while building mock catalogs from simulations using the method of SubHalo Abundance Matching (SHAM). For the weak lensing measurements, we use the shear estimators derived from the DECaLS DR8 imaging data, processed by the Fourier_Quad pipeline. The survey boundaries and masks are fully taken into account. Our analysis achieves a total significance of $31.1\sigma$ detection for lensing in the low density positions, which significantly improve the $\sigma_8$ constraint compared to galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy-galaxy two point correlation function by 14$\%$. For flat $\Lambda$CDM model, we constrain $\sigma_8$ =$0.824^{+0.015}_{-0.015}$, which shows a good agreement with the PLANCK result. Additionally, the halo mass uncertainty $\sigma_{\lg M}$ and photometric redshift error $\sigma_z$ are constrained to be $0.565^{+0.086}_{-0.070}$ and $0.004^{+0.004}_{-0.003}$ respectively, which are somewhat different from our expectations due to the significant degeneracy of the two parameters.

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arXiv2025

Photometric Objects Around Cosmic Webs (PAC) Delineated in a Spectroscopic Survey. VIII. Revisiting the Lensing is Low Effect

The issue of over-predicting the galaxy-galaxy lensing (GGL) signal using conventional galaxy-halo connection models has become well-known as the ``Lensing is Low'' problem, which has been extensively investigated using the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) galaxy samples. This issue is also tightly related to the so-called $S_8$ tension. By applying our Photometric objects Around Cosmic webs (PAC) method to the BOSS survey and the DESI deep photometric survey, we obtained hundreds of cross-correlation measurements to establish an accurate galaxy-halo connection for BOSS galaxies through the halo abundance matching technique (Paper IV). With this galaxy-halo connection, we show in this work that the predicted GGL signals for BOSS galaxies both in the Planck and WMAP Universes actually agree very well with the GGL measurements. We find the best-fitting value $S_8 = 0.8294 \pm 0.0110$, $0.8073 \pm 0.0372$ and $0.8189 \pm 0.0440$ for the CMASS samples with the source galaxies from HSC, DES and KiDS image surveys, respectively. Our work indicates that accurate modeling of the lens population is so critical to interpret the GGL observation. For the scale of $r_p < 0.6\,h^{-1}\rm{Mpc}$, our GGL prediction for LOWZ samples are also in good agreement with the observations of HSC and DES. However, the GGL observation of KiDS is much lower on the small scale. Our results indicate that no significant baryon feedback is needed to suppress the small scale clustering unless the the GGL observation of KiDS on the small scale will be confirmed.

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arXiv2024

Ellipticities of Galaxy Cluster Halos from Halo-Shear-Shear Correlations

We report the first detection of the halo ellipticities of galaxy clusters by applying the halo-shear-shear correlations (HSSC), without the necessity of major axis determination. We use the Fourier\_Quad shear catalog based on the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey and the group catalog from the DESI Legacy Surveys for the measurement of group/cluster lensing and HSSC. Our analysis includes the off-centering effects. We obtain the average projected ellipticity of dark matter halos with mass $13.5 < {\rm log} (M_G h/ M_\odot) < 14.5$ within 1.3 virial radius to be $0.48^{+0.12}_{-0.19}$. We divide the sample into two groups based on mass and redshift, and we find that halos with higher mass tend to exhibit increased ellipticity. We also reveal that high-richness halos have larger ellipticities, confirming the physical picture from numerical simulation that high-richiness halos have a dynamical youth and more active mass accretion phase.

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arXiv2024

Accurate Shear Recovery with Multi-Band Images of Hyper Suprime-Cam

The existing large scale weak lensing surveys typically reserve the best seeing conditions for a certain optical band to minimize shape measurement errors and maximize the number of usable background galaxies. This is because most popular shear measurement methods contain explicit or implicit thresholds on the galaxy-to-PSF (point spread function) size ratio, below which their shape measurement errors increase abruptly. Using the DECaLS data, we have previously demonstrated that the Fourier\_Quad method performs very well on poorly resolved galaxy images in general. It is therefore a ready tool for shear measurement with multi-band images regardless of their seeing conditions. In this paper, we apply the Fourier\_Quad pipeline on the multi-band images from the third public data release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. We show that the shear catalogs from the five optical bands (g/r/i/z/y) all pass the field-distortion test with very high accuracy. Using the LOWZ and CMASS galaxies as foreground lenses, we show that the errorbar in the galaxy-galaxy lensing measurement can be decreased by factors around 15\% by combining shear catalogs from different bands. This indicates that it is worthful to do multi-bands shear measurements for a better shear statistics.

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arXiv2024

Tele-Correlation: Calibrating Shear-Shear Correlation with Real Data

Tele-correlation refers to the correlation of galaxy shapes with large angular separations (e.g., $>100$ degrees). Since there are no astrophysical reasons causing such a correlation on cosmological scales, any detected tele-correlation could disclose systematic effects in shear-shear correlation measurement. If the shear estimators are measured on single exposures, we show that the field distortion (FD) signal associated with the galaxy position on the CCD can be retained and used in tele-correlation to help us directly calibrate the multiplicative and additive biases in shear-shear correlations. We use the DECaLS shear catalog produced by the Fourier\_Quad pipeline to demonstrate this idea. To our surprise, we find that significant multiplicative biases can arise (up to more than 10\%) due to redshift binning of the galaxies. Correction for this bias leads to about 1$\sigma$ increase of the best-fit value of $S_8$ from $0.760^{+0.015}_{-0.017}$ to $0.777^{+0.016}_{-0.019}$ in our tomography study.

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arXiv2024

Quasi-2D Weak Lensing Cosmological Constraints Using the PDF-SYM method

Cosmic shear statistics, such as the two-point correlation function (2PCF), can be evaluated with the PDF-SYM method instead of the traditional weighted-sum approach. It makes use of the full PDF information of the shear estimators, and does not require weightings on the shear estimators, which can in principle introduce additional systematic biases. This work presents our constraints on $S_8$ and $Ω_m$ from the shear-shear correlations using the PDF-SYM method. The data we use is from the z-band images of the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), which covers about 10000 deg$^2$ with more than 100 million galaxies. The shear catalog is produced by the Fourier\_Quad method, and well tested on the real data itself with the field-distortion effect. Our main approach is called quasi-2D as we do use the photo-$z$ information of each individual galaxy, but without dividing the galaxies into redshift bins. We mainly use galaxy pairs within the redshift interval between 0.2 and 1.3, and the angular range from $4.7$ to $180$ arcmin. Our analysis yields $S_8=0.762 \pm 0.026$ and $Ω_{\rm m}=0.234 \pm 0.075$, with the baryon effects and the intrinsic alignments included. The results are robust against redshift uncertainties. We check the consistency of our results by deriving the cosmological constraints from auto-correlations of $γ_1$ and $γ_2$ separately, and find that they are consistent with each other, but the constraints from the $γ_1$ component is much weaker than that from $γ_2$. It implies a much worse data quality of $γ_1$, which is likely due to additional shear uncertainties caused by CCD electronics (according to the survey strategy of DECaLS). We also perform a pure 2D analysis, which gives $S_8=0.81^{+0.03}_{-0.04}$ and $Ω_{\rm m}=0.25^{+0.06}_{-0.05}$. Our findings demonstrate the potential of the PDF-SYM method for precision cosmology.

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arXiv2023

DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Data Release 9: Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clustering and Weak Lensing using the Minimal Bias Model

We present a tentative constraint on cosmological parameters $Ω_m$ and $σ_8$ from a joint analysis of galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing from DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Data Release 9 (DR9), covering approximately 10000 square degrees and spanning the redshift range of 0.1 to 0.9. To study the dependence of cosmological parameters on lens redshift, we divide lens galaxies into seven approximately volume-limited samples, each with an equal width in photometric redshift. To retrieve the intrinsic projected correlation function $w_{\rm p}(r_{\rm p})$ from the lens samples, we employ a novel method to account for redshift uncertainties. Additionally, we measured the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal $ΔΣ(r_{\rm p})$ for each lens sample, using source galaxies selected from the shear catalog by applying our \texttt{Fourier\_Quad} pipeline to DR9 images. We model these observables within the flat $Λ$CDM framework, employing the minimal bias model. To ensure the reliability of the minimal bias model, we apply conservative scale cuts: $r_{\rm p} > 8$ and $12 ~h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$, for $w_{\rm p}(r_{\rm p})$ and $ΔΣ(r_{\rm p})$, respectively. Our findings suggest a mild tendency that $S_8 \equiv σ_8 \sqrt{Ω_m/0.3} $ increases with lens redshift, although this trend is only marginally significant. When we combine low redshift samples, the value of $S_8$ is determined to be $0.84 \pm 0.02$, consistent with the Planck results but significantly higher than the 3$\times$ 2pt analysis by 2-5$σ$. Despite the fact that further refinements in measurements and modeling could improve the accuracy of our results, the consistency with standard values demonstrates the potential of our method for more precise and accurate cosmology in the future.

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arXiv2023

Towards Optimal Reconstruction of Shear Field with PDF-Folding

Weak lensing provides a direct way of mapping the density distribution in the universe. To reconstruct the density field from the shear catalog, an important step is to build the shear field from the shear catalog, which can be quite nontrivial due to the inhomogeneity of the background galaxy distribution and the shape noise. We propose the PDF-Folding method as a statistically optimal way of reconstructing the shear field. It is an extention of the PDF-SYM method, which is previously designed for optimizing the stacked shear signal as well as the shear-shear correlation for the Fourier\_Quad shear estimators. PDF-Folding does not require smoothing kernels as in traditional methods, therefore it suffers less information loss on small scales, and avoids possible biases due to the spatial variation of shear on the scale of the kernel. We show with analytic reasoning as well as numerical examples that the new method can reach the optimal signal-to-noise ratio on the reconstructed shear map under general observing conditions, i.e., with inhomogeneous background densities or masks. We also show the performance of the new method on real data around foreground galaxy clusters.

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arXiv2023

Satellite Content and Halo Mass of Galaxy Clusters: Comparison between Red-Sequence and Halo-based Optical Cluster Finders

Cluster cosmology depends critically on how optical clusters are selected from imaging surveys. We compare the conditional luminosity function (CLF) and weak lensing halo masses between two different cluster samples at fixed richness, detected within the same volume ($0.1{<}z{<}0.34$) using the red-sequence and halo-based methods. After calibrating our CLF deprojection method against mock galaxy samples, we measure the 3D CLFs by cross-correlating clusters with SDSS photometric galaxies. As expected, the CLFs of red-sequence and halo-based finders exhibit redder and bluer populations, respectively. The red-sequence clusters have a flat distribution of red galaxies at the faint end, while the halo-based clusters host a decreasing faint red and a boosted blue population at the bright end. By comparing subsamples of clusters that have a match between the two catalogues to those without matches, we discover that the CLF shape is mainly caused by the different cluster centroiding. However, the average weak lensing halo mass between the matched and non-matched clusters are consistent with each other in either cluster sample for halos with $λ>30$ (M$_{h}^{WL}{>}1.5\times10^{14}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$). Since the colour preferences of the two cluster finders are almost orthogonal, such a consistency indicates that the scatter in the mass-richness relation of either cluster sample is close to random. Therefore, while the choice of how optical clusters are identified impacts the satellite content, our result suggests that it should not introduce strong systematic biases in cluster cosmology, except for the $λ<30$ regime.

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arXiv2023

Dark against luminous matter around isolated central galaxies: a comparative study between modern surveys and Illustris-TNG

Based on independent shear measurements using the DECaLS/DR8 imaging data, we measure the weak lensing signals around isolated central galaxies (ICGs) from SDSS/DR7 at $z\sim0.1$. The projected stellar mass density profiles of surrounding satellite galaxies are further deduced, using photometric sources from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey (pDR3). The signals of ICGs $+$ their extended stellar halos are taken from Wang et al.(2021). All measurements are compared with predictions by the Illustris-TNG300-1 simulation. We find, overall, a good agreement between observation and TNG300. In particular, a correction to the stellar mass of massive observed ICGs is applied based on the calibration of He et al.(2013), which brings a much better agreement with TNG300 predicted lensing signals at $\log_{10}M_\ast/M_\odot>11.1$. In real observation, red ICGs are hosted by more massive dark matter halos, have more satellites and more extended stellar halos than blue ICGs at fixed stellar mass. However, in TNG300 there are more satellites around blue ICGs at fixed stellar mass, and the outer stellar halos of red and blue ICGs are similar. The stellar halos of TNG galaxies are more extended compared with real observed galaxies, especially for blue ICGs with $\log_{10}M_\ast/M_\odot>10.8$. We find the same trend for TNG100 galaxies and for true halo central galaxies. The tensions between TNG and real galaxies might indicate that satellite disruptions are stronger in TNG. In both TNG300 and observation, satellites approximately trace the underlying dark matter distribution beyond $0.1R_{200}$, but the fraction of total stellar mass in TNG300 does not show the same radial distribution as real galaxies.

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arXiv2022

Halo Properties and Mass Functions of Groups/Clusters from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR9

Based on a large group/cluster catalog recently constructed from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR9 using an extended halo-based group finder, we measure and model the group-galaxy weak lensing signals for groups/clusters in a few redshift bins within redshift range $0.1 \leqslant z<0.6$. Here, the background shear signals are obtained based on the DECaLS survey shape catalog derived with the \textsc{Fourier\_Quad} method. We divide the lens samples into 5 equispaced redshift bins and 7 mass bins, which allow us to probe the redshift and mass dependence of the lensing signals and hence the resulting halo properties. In addition to these sample selections, we have also checked the signals around different group centers, e.g., brightest central galaxy (BCG), luminosity weighted center and number weighted center. We use a lensing model that includes off-centering to describe the lensing signals we measure for all mass and redshift bins. The results demonstrate that our model predictions for the halo masses, bias and concentrations are stable and self-consistent among different samples for different group centers. Taking advantage of the very large and complete sample of groups/clusters, as well as the reliable estimation of their halo masses, we provide measurements of the cumulative halo mass functions up to redshift $z=0.6$, with a mass precision at $0.03\sim0.09$ dex.

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arXiv2022

Shear Measurement with Poorly Resolved Images

Weak lensing studies typically require excellent seeing conditions for the purpose of maximizing the number density of well-resolved galaxy images. It is interesting to ask to what extent the seeing size limits the usefulness of the astronomical images in weak lensing. In this work, we study this issue with the data of the DECam Legacy Survey (DECaLS), which is a part of the target selection program for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Using the Fourier Quad shear measurement pipeline, we demonstrate that images with relatively poor seeing conditions (around 1.5 arcsec) can still yield accurate shear estimators. We do not find any correlation between systematic shear error and the image resolution.

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arXiv2022

Tolerance For the Pixelation Effect in Shear Measurement

Images taken by space telescopes typically have a superb spatial resolution, but a relatively poor sampling rate due to the finite CCD pixel size. Beyond the Nyquist limit, it becomes uncertain how much the pixelation effect may affect the accuracy of galaxy shape measurement. It is timely to study this issue given that a number of space-based large-scale weak lensing surveys are planned. Using the Fourier_Quad method, we quantify the shear recovery error as a function of the sampling factor Q, i.e., the ratio between the FWHM of the point-spread-function (PSF) and the pixel size of the CCD, for different PSFs and galaxies of different sizes and noise levels. We show that sub-percent-level accuracy in shear recovery is achievable with single-exposure images for $Q\lesssim 2$. The conclusion holds for galaxies much smaller than the PSF, and those with a significant level of noise.

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arXiv2022

First measurement of the characteristic depletion radius of dark matter haloes from weak lensing

We use weak lensing observations to make the first measurement of the characteristic depletion radius, one of the three radii that characterize the region where matter is being depleted by growing haloes. The lenses are taken from the halo catalog produced by the extended halo-based group/cluster finder applied to DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR9, while the sources are extracted from the DECaLS DR8 imaging data with the Fourier_Quad pipeline. We study halo masses $12 < \log ( M_{\rm grp} ~[{\rm M_{\odot}}/h] ) \leq 15.3$ within redshifts $0.2 \leq z \leq 0.3$. The virial and splashback radii are also measured and used to test the original findings on the depletion region. When binning haloes by mass, we find consistency between most of our measurements and predictions from the CosmicGrowth simulation, with exceptions to the lowest mass bins. The characteristic depletion radius is found to be roughly $2.5$ times the virial radius and $1.7 - 3$ times the splashback radius, in line with an approximately universal outer density profile, and the average enclosed density within the characteristic depletion radius is found to be roughly $29$ times the mean matter density of the Universe in our sample. When binning haloes by both mass and a proxy for halo concentration, we do not detect a significant variation of the depletion radius with concentration, on which the simulation prediction is also sensitive to the choice of concentration proxy. We also confirm that the measured splashback radius varies with concentration differently from simulation predictions.

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arXiv2021

Towards a Bias-Free Selection Function in Shear Measurement

Sample selection is a necessary preparation for weak lensing measurement. It is well-known that selection itself may introduce bias in the measured shear signal. Using image simulation and the Fourier_Quad shear measurement pipeline, we quantify the selection bias in various commonly used selection function (signal-to-noise-ratio, magnitude, etc.). We proposed a new selection function defined in the power spectrum of the galaxy image. This new selection function has low selection bias, and it is particularly convenient for shear measurement pipelines based on Fourier transformation.

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arXiv2020

Avoiding the Geometric Boundary Effect in Shear Measurement

In image processing, source detections are inevitably affected by the presence of the geometric boundaries in the images, including the physical boundaries of the CCD, and the boundaries of masked regions due to column defects, bright diffraction spikes, etc.. These boundary conditions make the source detection process not statistically isotropic. It can lead to additive shear bias near the boundaries. We build a phenomenological model to understand the bias, and propose a simple method to effectively eliminate the influence of geometric boundaries on shear measurement. We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of this method using both simulations and the z-band imaging data from the third data release of the DECam Legacy Survey.

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arXiv2019

Constraining Dark Energy With Stacked Concave Lenses

Low density regions are less affected by the nonlinear structure formation and baryonic physics. They are ideal places for probing the nature of dark energy, a possible explanation for the cosmic acceleration. Unlike void lensing, which requires identifications of individual voids, we study the stacked lensing signals around the low-density-positions (LDP), defined as places that are devoid of foreground bright galaxies in projection. The method allows a direct comparison with numerical results by drawing correspondence between the bright galaxies with halos. It leads to lensing signals that are significant enough for differentiating several dark energy models. In this work, we use the CFHTLenS catalogue to define LDPs, as well as measuring their background lensing signals. We consider several different definitions of the foreground bright galaxies (redshift range \& magnitude cut). Regarding the cosmological model, we run six simulations: the first set of simulations have the same initial conditions, with $\rm{w_{de}=-1,-0.5,-0.8,-1.2}$; the second set of simulations include a slightly different $Λ$CDM model and a w(z) model from \cite{2017NatAs...1..627Z}. The lensing results indicate that the models with $\rm{w_{de}=-0.5,-0.8}$ are not favored, and the other four models all achieve comparable agreement with the data.

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