arXiv subjects

Ludovic van Waerbeke

Publications and source records attributed to Ludovic van Waerbeke.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS). II. A Catalog of Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster

The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) is a deep, high resolution imaging campaign that used the 1 deg$^2$ MegaCam instrument on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope to carry out a comprehensive optical survey of the Virgo cluster, from its core to its virial radius. The NGVS covers a contiguous area of 104 deg$^2$ (8.63 Mpc$^2$ at the 16.5 Mpc distance of Virgo) in the $u^*$-,$g$-,$i$-, and $z$-band, with additional limited coverage in $r$. In this paper, we present the final catalog of Virgo galaxies across the entire NGVS area. The catalog includes 3680 galaxies considered to be $bona~fide$ members of the cluster, spanning a factor of 2.5 million in luminosity, from $g = 8.42$ mag to $g = 24.41$ mag ($M_g = -22.67$ mag to $M_g = -6.68$ mag). With 2100 previously uncataloged galaxies, the NGVS catalog augments the number of known Virgo members by a factor 2.3. The catalog is complete down to $g = 18.6$ mag ($M_g=-12.5$ mag, corresponding to a stellar mass $M_* \sim 1.6\times10^7~M_{\odot}$ for an old stellar population) and 50% complete at $g = 22.0$ mag ($M_g=-9.1$ mag, $M_* \sim 6.2\times10^5~M_{\odot}$), three magnitudes deeper than the venerable Virgo Cluster Catalog (VCC), which for over 40 years has served as the reference standard for Virgo. Photometric and structural parameters are derived for all NGVS galaxies and presented in a series of tables, alongside nuclear and morphological classification, as well as stellar masses and, when available, radial velocities.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

KiDS-Legacy: The consistency test of the large-scale structure with Bernardeau-Nishimichi-Taruya transform

We perform the first $k$-cut cosmic shear analysis of the KiDS-Legacy survey. This method uses the Bernardeau-Nishimichi-Taruya (BNT) transform to construct weak-lensing kernels that are more localised than conventional ones, and remove information from selected physical scales while retaining the constraining power of the targeted range. Removing the scale of $k \geq 0.33~\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ from the KiDS-Legacy pseudo-$C_\ell$ data vector, and using a covariance matrix whose Gaussian component is computed from the theoretical data vector, we find $S_8 = 0.798 \pm 0.045$. This agrees with both the fiducial KiDS-Legacy bandpower result and our no-$k$-cut pseudo-$C_\ell$ posterior to within $0.1σ$, indicating no significant bias from nonlinear astrophysical feedback at the precision of KiDS-Legacy. We also study the case in which the Gaussian covariance is computed from the observed data vector. In this setup, the same scale cut of $k < 0.33~\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ gives a much lower $S_8=0.717_{-0.046}^{+0.047}$. Further $k$-cut tests reveal a mild scale-dependent trend, with larger physical scales preferring lower $S_8$ values and a maximum low- versus high-$k$ deviation of $1.80σ$. Mock tests show that this behaviour is not produced by the covariance prescription or data vector alone, but may arise from their interplay. These results show that BNT $k$-cuts provide both a mitigation strategy for nonlinear systematics and a diagnostic of weak-lensing inference pipelines.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Lensing the darkness: The matter density profile in cosmic voids from UNIONS

We measure the distribution of matter contained within the emptiest regions of the Universe: cosmic voids. We use the large overlap between the Ultraviolet Near-Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) and voids identified in the LOWZ and CMASS catalogues of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) to constrain the excess surface mass density of voids using weak lensing. We present and validate a novel method for computing the Gaussian component of the conventional weak lensing covariance, adapted for use with void studies. We detect the stacked weak lensing void density profile at the $6.2σ$ level, the most significant detection of void lensing from spectroscopically-identified voids to date. We find that large and small voids have different matter density profiles, as expected from numerical studies of void profiles. This difference is significant at the $2.3σ$ level. Comparing the void profile to a measurement of the void-galaxy cross-correlation to test the linearity of the relationship between mass and light, we find good visual agreement between the two, and a galaxy bias factor of $2.45\pm0.36$, consistent with other works. This work represents a promising detection of the lensing effect from underdensities, with the goal of promoting its development into a competitive cosmological probe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Mitigating Nonlinear Systematics in Weak Lensing Surveys II: Stability and Diagnostics with Intrinsic Alignment

The Bernardeau-Nishimichi-Taruya (BNT) transform provides a powerful framework for analysing tomographic cosmic shear data by improving the localization of shear correlations in physical scale. It operates by performing a linear combination of the shear data vector in $\ell$-space, yielding a transformed vector that is better localized in both redshift and $k$-space. BNT is particularly useful for estimating cosmological parameters while minimizing the impact of poorly understood nonlinear physics, without discarding large amounts of information as is typically done with simple scale cuts. In our previous work, we showed that BNT outperforms traditional weak-lensing analyses; however, that study did not include intrinsic alignments (IA). In the present work, we assess the robustness of our BNT-based $k$-cut framework in the presence of realistic IA models. We consider two cases: (i) when the assumed IA model used in sampling is close to, but not identical to, the true one, and (ii) when the assumed IA model is significantly biased compared to the true one. In the first case, the $k$-cut framework yields precise and unbiased $S_8$ constraints even with limited knowledge of large-scale modes. Using Euclid-like mock data and a stringent $k$-cut of $k \le 0.1\;{\rm Mpc^{-1}}$ for all tomographic bins, we found that BNT can constrain $S_8$ with a precision better than 2\% while non-BNT has lost all constraining power. In the second case, the BNT transform serves as a powerful diagnostic tool, revealing internal inconsistencies in $k$-space and redshift-space both exceeding 5$σ$ when the functional form of the sampling and fiducial IA models differ fundamentally.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Unions with UNIONS: Using galaxy-galaxy lensing to probe galaxy mergers

We use galaxy-galaxy lensing to investigate how the dark matter (DM) haloes and stellar content of galaxies with $0.012 \leq z \leq 0.32$ and $10 \leq \log_{10}(M_\star/\mathrm{M}_\odot) \leq 12$ change as a result of the merger process. To this end, we construct two samples of galaxies obtained from the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS), comprising 1 623 post-mergers and $\sim$30 000 non-merging controls, that live in low-density environments to use as our lenses. These samples are weighted to share the same distributions of stellar mass, redshift, and geometric mean distance to a galaxy's three nearest neighbours to ensure differences in the lensing signal are due to the merger process itself. We do not detect a statistically significant difference in the excess surface density profile of post-mergers and non-merging controls with current data. Fitting haloes composed of a point-like stellar mass component and an extended DM structure described by a Navarro-Frenk-White profile to the lensing measurements yields, for both samples, halo masses of $M_\text{halo} \sim 4\times10^{12}\,\mathrm{M}_\odot$ and a moderately negative correlation between $M_\text{halo}$ and concentration $c$. This allows us to rule out, at the 95% confidence level, merger-induced starbursts in which more than 60% of the stellar mass is formed in the burst. The application of our methods to upcoming surveys that are able to provide samples $\sim$10$\times$ larger than our current catalogue are expected to detect the weak-lensing signatures of mergers and further constrain their properties.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

Unified weak lensing constraints on the evolution of the mass -- X-ray luminosity relation for galaxy clusters

Scaling relations between galaxy cluster properties are crucial for understanding cosmology and baryonic physics. Rigorous calibration of the $M-L_X$ relation, employing weak lensing mass and consistent statistical methodology, is challenging due to heterogeneous cluster samples. The release of LEGACY imaging data introduced the possibility of unifying the cluster selection. We present the all-sky extension of the CODEX catalog based on LEGACY data and introduce a Bayesian framework for calibrating the X-ray luminosity-mass relation, derived for 100 clusters with weak lensing mass measurements. Using the X-ray luminosity estimates for those clusters from ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) data, we perform a power-law fit to the $M-L_X$ relation. Furthermore, taking advantage of the recently released eROSITA data (eRASS1), we assess the impact of point source contamination on cluster fluxes for 42 clusters in the eRASS1 footprint. The RASS fit yields a slope of $β= 0.75 \pm 0.09$, 1.7$σ$ lower than the best self-similar prediction, with marginal evidence for the redshift evolution of the normalization ($γ= 0.65 \pm 0.43$). As for the eRASS1 analysis, the slope is substantially steeper, $β= 1.11 \pm 0.15$, and in further agreement with the prediction of self-similarity. No additional evolution is also seen ($γ= 0.004 \pm 0.790 $). While our results provide the practical means for cosmological studies of both RASS and eRASS data, the link to cluster physics is much cleaner after the cluster flux contamination is reduced. We also analyzed the impact of the selection function on calibration, finding that its full modeling is essential.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Mitigating Nonlinear Systematics in Weak Lensing Surveys: The Bernardeau-Nishimichi-Taruya Approach

Weak lensing surveys, along with most other late-Universe probes, have consistently measured a lower amplitude of the matter fluctuation spectrum, denoted by the parameter $S_8$, compared to predictions from early-Universe measurements in cosmic microwave background data. Improper modelling of nonlinear scales may partially explain these discrepancies in lensing surveys. This study investigates whether the conventional approach to addressing small-scale biases remains optimal for Stage-IV lensing surveys. We demonstrate that conventional weak lensing estimators are affected by scale leakage from theoretical biases at nonlinear scales, which influence all observed scales. Using the BNT transform, we propose an $\ell$-cut methodology that effectively controls this leakage. The Bernardeau-Nishimichi-Taruya (BNT) transform reorganises weak lensing data in $\ell$ space, aligning it with $k$ space, thereby reducing the mixing of nonlinear scales and providing a more accurate interpretation of the data. We evaluate the BNT approach by comparing HMcode, Halofit, Baryon Correction Model and AxionHMcode mass power spectrum models using Euclid-like survey configurations. Additionally, we introduce a new estimator to quantify scale leakage in both the BNT and noBNT approaches. Our findings show that BNT outperforms traditional methods, preserving cosmological constraints while significantly mitigating theoretical biases.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Constraints on galaxy formation from the cosmic-far-infrared-background\,$-$\,optical-imaging cross-correlation using \textit{Herschel} and UNIONS

Using {\it Herschel}-SPIRE imaging and the Canada-France Imaging Survey (CFIS) Low Surface Brightness data products from the Ultraviolet Near-Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS), we present a cross-correlation between the cosmic far-infrared background and cosmic optical background fluctuations. The cross-spectrum is measured for two cases: all galaxies are kept in the images; or all individually-detected galaxies are masked to produce `background' maps. We report the detection of the cross-correlation signal at $\gtrsim 18\,σ$ ($\gtrsim 14\,σ$ for the background map). The part of the optical brightness variations that are correlated with the submm emission translates to an rms brightness of $\simeq 32.5\,{\rm mag}\,{\rm arcsec}^{-2}$ in the $r$ band, a level normally unreachable for individual sources. A critical issue is determining what fraction of the cross-power spectrum might be caused by emission from Galactic cirrus. For one of the fields, the Galactic contamination is 10 times higher than the extragalactic signal; however, for the other fields, the contamination is around 20~per cent. An additional discriminant is that the cross-power spectrum is of the approximate form $P(k)\propto 1/k$, much shallower than that of Galactic cirrus. We interpret the results in a halo-model framework, which shows good agreement with independent measurements for the scalings of star-formation rates in galaxies. The approach presented in this study holds great promise for future surveys such as FYST/CCAT-prime combined with {\it Euclid} or the Vera Rubin Observatory (LSST), which will enable a detailed exploration of the evolution of star formation in galaxies.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2024

The star formation, dust, and abundance of galaxies with unWISE-CIB cross-correlations

The cosmic infrared background (CIB) is the accumulated infrared (IR) radiation mainly from interstellar dust heated up by early stars. In this work, we measure the cross-correlation between galaxies from the unWISE catalog and the CIB maps from the Planck satellite to simultaneously constrain the cosmic star formation rate (SFR), dust spectral energy distribution (SED), and the halo occupation distribution (HOD). The unWISE galaxy catalog is divided into three tomographic bins centered at $z\sim 0.6, 1.1, 1.5$, and the CIB maps are at 353, 545, and 857 GHz. We measure the cross-correlations between these galaxy samples and CIB maps and get a 194$σ$ signal within an angular scale $100<\ell<2000$, from which we constrain two CIB halo models from previous literature and one new model. The SFR, SED, and HOD model parameters are constrained consistently among the three models. Specifically, the dust temperature at $z=0$ is constrained $T_0={21.14}^{+1.02}_{-1.34}$ K, which is slightly lower than $T_0=24.4\pm1.9$ K measured by the Planck collaboration. The halo mass that gives the most efficient star formation is around $10^{{11.79}^{+0.73}_{-0.86}}M_{\odot}$. From the model parameters, combined with the SFR density at $z=0$ synthesized from multi-wavelength observations, we break the degeneracy between SED and SFR and recover the cosmic star formation history that is consistent with multi-wavelength surveys. We also constrain the graybody SED model in agreement with previous measurements from infrared flux stacking. From the HOD constraints, we derive an increasing trend of galaxy linear bias along redshifts that agrees with the results from cross- and auto-correlation with unWise galaxies. This study indicates the power of using CIB-galaxy cross-correlation to study star formation, dust, and abundance of galaxies across cosmic time.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Black-Hole-to-Halo Mass Relation From UNIONS Weak Lensing

This letter presents, for the first time, direct constraints on the black-hole-to-halo-mass relation using weak gravitational lensing measurements. We construct type I and type II Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) samples from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with a mean redshift of 0.4 0.1 for type I (type II) AGNs. This sample is cross-correlated with weak lensing shear from the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Northern Survey (UNIONS). We compute the excess surface mass density of the halos associated with $36,181$ AGNs from $94,308,561$ lensed galaxies and fit the halo mass in bins of black-hole mass. We find that more massive AGNs reside in more massive halos. We see no evidence of dependence on AGN type or redshift in the black-hole-to-halo-mass relationship when systematic errors in the measured black-hole masses are included. Our results are consistent with previous measurements for non-AGN galaxies. At a fixed black-hole mass, our weak-lensing halo masses are consistent with galaxy rotation curves, but significantly lower than galaxy clustering measurements. Finally, our results are broadly consistent with state-of-the-art hydro-dynamical cosmological simulations, providing a new constraint for black-hole masses in simulations.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

On constraining Cosmology and the Halo Mass Function with Weak Gravitational Lensing

The discrepancy between the weak lensing (WL) and the {\it Planck} measurements of $S_8$ has been a subject of several studies. These studies tend to show that a suppression of the amplitude of the mass power spectrum $P(k)$ at high $k$ could resolve it. The WL signal at small-scale is sensitive to various effects, such as baryonic effects and intrinsic alignment. The accuracy of $P(k)$ depends on the modelling precision of these effects. A common approach for calculating $P(k)$ relies on a halo model. Amongst the various components necessary for the construction of $P(k)$, the halo mass function (HMF) is an important one. Traditionally, the HMF has been assumed to follow a fixed model. Recent literature shows that baryonic physics, amongst several other factors, could affect the HMF. In this study, we investigate the impact of allowing the HMF to vary. This provides a way of testing the validity of the halo model-HMF calibration using data. We find that the {\it Planck} cosmology is not compatible with the vanilla HMF for both the DES-y3 and the KiDS-1000 data. When the cosmology and the HMF parameters are allowed to vary, the {\it Planck} cosmology is no longer in tension. The modified HMF predicts a matter power spectrum with a $\sim 25\%$ power loss at $k\sim 1~{\rm h/Mpc}$, in agreement with the recent studies. We show that Stage IV surveys will be able to measure the HMF parameters with a few percent accuracy.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

The shape of dark matter haloes: results from weak lensing in the Ultraviolet Near-Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS)

Cold dark matter haloes are expected to be triaxial, and so appear elliptical in projection. We use weak gravitational lensing from the Canada-France Imaging Survey (CFIS) component of the Ultraviolet-Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) to measure the ellipticity of the dark matter haloes around Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (DR7) and from the CMASS and LOWZ samples of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), assuming their major axes are aligned with the stellar light. We find that DR7 LRGs with masses $M \sim 2.7\times10^{13} \mathrm{M}_{\odot}/h$ have halo ellipticities $e=0.46\pm0.10$. Expressed as a fraction of the galaxy ellipticity, we find $f_h = 2.2\pm0.6$. For BOSS LRGs, the detection is of marginal significance: $e = 0.20\pm0.10$ and $f_h=0.7\pm0.7$. These results are in agreement with other measurements of halo ellipticity from weak lensing and, taken together with previous results, suggest an increase of halo ellipticity of $0.10\pm0.06$ per decade in halo mass. This trend agrees with the predictions from hydrodynamical simulations, which find that at higher halo masses, not only do dark matter haloes become more elliptical, but that the misalignment between major axis of the stellar light in the central galaxy and that of the dark matter decreases.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Cosmic star formation history with tomographic cosmic infrared background-galaxy cross-correlation

In this work, we probe the star formation history of the Universe using tomographic cross-correlation between the cosmic infrared background (CIB) and galaxy samples. The galaxy samples are from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), while the CIB maps are made from \planck\, sky maps. We measure the cross-correlation in harmonic space with a significance of 43$σ$. We model the cross-correlation with a halo model, which links CIB anisotropies to star formation rates (SFR) and galaxy abundance. We assume that SFR has a lognormal dependence on halo mass, while galaxy abundance follows the halo occupation distribution (HOD) model. The cross-correlations give a best-fit maximum star formation efficiency of $η_{\mathrm{max}}= 0.41^{+0.09}_{-0.14}$ at a halo mass $\log_{10}(M_{\mathrm{peak}}/M_{\odot})= {12.14\pm 0.36}$. The derived star formation rate density (SFRD) is well constrained up to $z\sim 1.5$. The constraining power at high redshift is mainly limited by the KiDS survey depth. A combination with external SFRD measurements from previous studies gives $\log_{10}(M_{\mathrm{peak}}/M_{\odot})=12.42^{+0.35}_{-0.19}$. This tightens the SFRD constraint up to $z=4$, yielding a peak SFRD of $0.09_{-0.004}^{+0.003}\,M_{\odot} \mathrm { year }^{-1} \mathrm{Mpc}^{-3}$ at $z=1.74^{+0.06}_{-0.02}$, corresponding to a lookback time of $10.05^{+0.12}_{-0.03}$ Gyr. Both constraints are consistent, and the derived SFRD agrees with previous studies and simulations. Additionally, we estimate the galaxy bias $b$ of KiDS galaxies from the constrained HOD parameters and yield an increasing bias from $b=1.1_{-0.31}^{+0.17}$ at $z=0$ to $b=1.96_{-0.64}^{+0.18}$ at $z=1.5$. Finally, we provide a forecast for future galaxy surveys and conclude that, due to their considerable depth, future surveys will yield a much tighter constraint on the evolution of the SFRD.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Joint constraints on cosmology and the impact of baryon feedback: combining KiDS-1000 lensing with the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect from Planck and ACT

We conduct a pseudo-$C_\ell$ analysis of the tomographic cross-correlation between 1000 deg$^2$ of weak lensing data from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-1000) and the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect measured by Planck and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). Using HMx, a halo-model-based approach that consistently models the gas, star, and dark matter components, we are able to derive constraints on both cosmology and baryon feedback for the first time from these data, marginalising over redshift uncertainties, intrinsic alignment of galaxies, and contamination by the cosmic infrared background (CIB). We find our results to be insensitive to the CIB, while intrinsic alignment provides a small but significant contribution to the lensing--tSZ cross-correlation. The cosmological constraints are consistent with those of other low-redshift probes and prefer strong baryon feedback. The inferred amplitude of the lensing--tSZ cross-correlation signal, which scales as $σ_8(Ω_\mathrm{m}/0.3)^{0.2}$, is low by $\sim 2\,σ$ compared to the primary cosmic microwave background constraints by Planck. The lensing--tSZ measurements are then combined with pseudo-$C_\ell$ measurements of KiDS-1000 cosmic shear into a novel joint analysis, accounting for the full cross-covariance between the probes, providing tight cosmological constraints by breaking parameter degeneracies inherent to both probes. The joint analysis gives an improvement of 40% on the constraint of $S_8=σ_8\sqrt{Ω_\mathrm{m}/0.3}$ over cosmic shear alone, while providing constraints on baryon feedback consistent with hydrodynamical simulations, demonstrating the potential of such joint analyses with baryonic tracers such as the tSZ effect. We discuss remaining modelling challenges that need to be addressed if these baryonic probes are to be included in future precision-cosmology analyses.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Probing galaxy bias and intergalactic gas pressure with KiDS Galaxies-tSZ-CMB lensing cross-correlations

We constrain the redshift dependence of gas pressure bias $\left\langle b_{y} P_{\mathrm{e}}\right\rangle$ (bias-weighted average electron pressure), which characterises the thermodynamics of intergalactic gas, through a combination of cross-correlations between galaxy positions and the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect, as well as galaxy positions and the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The galaxy sample is from the fourth data release of the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS). The tSZ $y$ map and the CMB lensing map are from the {\textit{Planck}} 2015 and 2018 data releases, respectively. The measurements are performed in five redshift bins with $z\lesssim1$. With these measurements, combining galaxy-tSZ and galaxy-CMB lensing cross-correlations allows us to break the degeneracy between galaxy bias and gas pressure bias, and hence constrain them simultaneously. In all redshift bins, the best-fit values of $\bpe$ are at a level of $\sim 0.3\, \mathrm{meV/cm^3}$ and increase slightly with redshift. The galaxy bias is consistent with unity in all the redshift bins. Our results are not sensitive to the non-linear details of the cross-correlation, which are smoothed out by the {\textit{Planck}} beam. Our measurements are in agreement with previous measurements as well as with theoretical predictions. We also show that our conclusions are not changed when CMB lensing is replaced by galaxy lensing, which shows the consistency of the two lensing signals despite their radically different redshift ranges. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using CMB lensing to calibrate the galaxy distribution such that the galaxy distribution can be used as a mass proxy without relying on the precise knowledge of the matter distribution.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Multi-wavelength scaling relations in galaxy groups: a detailed comparison of GAMA and KiDS observations to BAHAMAS simulations

We study the scaling relations between the baryonic content and total mass of groups of galaxies, as these systems provide a unique way to examine the role of non-gravitational processes in structure formation. Using Planck and ROSAT data, we conduct detailed comparisons of the stacked thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) and X-ray scaling relations of galaxy groups found in the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey and the BAHAMAS hydrodynamical simulation. We use weak gravitational lensing data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) to determine the average halo mass of the studied systems. We analyse the simulation in the same way, using realistic weak lensing, X-ray, and tSZ synthetic observations. Furthermore, to keep selection biases under control, we employ exactly the same galaxy selection and group identification procedures to the observations and simulation. Applying this comparison, we find that the simulations reproduce the richness, size, and stellar mass functions of GAMA groups, as well as the stacked weak lensing and tSZ signals in bins of group stellar mass. However, the simulations predict X-ray luminosities that are higher than observed for this optically-selected group sample. As the same simulations were previously shown to match the luminosities of X-ray-selected groups, this suggests that X-ray-selected systems may form a biased subset. Finally, we demonstrate that our observational processing of the X-ray and tSZ signals is free of significant biases. We find that our optical group selection procedure has, however, some room for improvement.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

Sheer shear: weak lensing with one mode

3D data compression techniques can be used to determine the natural basis of radial eigenmodes that encode the maximum amount of information in a tomographic large-scale structure survey. We explore the potential of the Karhunen-Loève decomposition in reducing the dimensionality of the data vector for cosmic shear measurements, and apply it to the final data from the \cfh survey. We find that practically all of the cosmological information can be encoded in one single radial eigenmode, from which we are able to reproduce compatible constraints with those found in the fiducial tomographic analysis (done with 7 redshift bins) with a factor of ~30 fewer datapoints. This simplifies the problem of computing the two-point function covariance matrix from mock catalogues by the same factor, or by a factor of ~800 for an analytical covariance. The resulting set of radial eigenfunctions is close to ell-independent, and therefore they can be used as redshift-dependent galaxy weights. This simplifies the application of the Karhunen-Loève decomposition to real-space and Fourier-space data, and allows one to explore the effective radial window function of the principal eigenmodes as well as the associated shear maps in order to identify potential systematics. We also apply the method to extended parameter spaces and verify that additional information may be gained by including a second mode to break parameter degeneracies. The data and analysis code are publicly available at https://github.com/emiliobellini/kl_sample.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2019

An Assessment of Contamination in the thermal-SZ Map Using Cross Correlations

We search for the potential contamination in the Planck thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) map by calculating the cross-correlation between the tSZ signal and weak lensing by large scale structure and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The lensing data we use is the convergence map from the Red Sequence Cluster Lensing Survey (RCSLens) and the Planck CMB lensing map. We reconstruct the tSZ $y$ map with a Needlet Internal Linear Combination method using the HFI sky maps from the Planck satellite. We remove the CMB signal while minimizing the residual noise. The cross correlation signal from our reconstructed $y$ map is consistent with that from the Planck team's NILC $y$ map. The CIB and galactic dust emission are two potential sources of contamination in the reconstructed $y$ map. We remove the CIB signal by subtracting the CIB maps reconstructed by Planck collaboration from the raw temperature maps. We find that cross-correlation between the CIB and galactic lensing contributes to $(7.5\pm6.0)\%$ in the Planck NILC tSZ cross galactic lensing signal within $100<\ell<2000$, which implies that previous detections of the tSZ cross galactic lensing is robust to CIB contaminations. In contrast, the Planck NILC tSZ cross CMB lensing is biased by $(18.4\pm2.8)\%$ in the same $\ell$ range. Galactic dust contamination is tested by projecting out a grey-body dust models with different dust spectral indices. Galactic dust does not affect galactic lensing cross tSZ signal significantly.

astro-ph.CO↗