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Title: Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: the impact of galaxy neighbours on weak lensing cosmology with IM3SHAPE

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
 [1]
  1. Univ. of Manchester (United Kingdom). et al.

In this work, we use a suite of simulated images based on Year 1 of the Dark Energy Survey to explore the impact of galaxy neighbours on shape measurement and shear cosmology. The hoopoe image simulations include realistic blending, galaxy positions, and spatial variations in depth and point spread function properties. Using the im3shape maximum-likelihood shape measurement code, we identify four mechanisms by which neighbours can have a non-negligible influence on shear estimation. These effects, if ignored, would contribute a net multiplicative bias of m ~0.03–0.09 in the Year One of the Dark Energy Survey (DES Y1) im3shape catalogue, though the precise impact will be dependent on both the measurement code and the selection cuts applied. This can be reduced to percentage level or less by removing objects with close neighbours, at a cost to the effective number density of galaxies neff of 30 percent. We use the cosmological inference pipeline of DES Y1 to explore the cosmological implications of neighbour bias and show that omitting blending from the calibration simulation for DES Y1 would bias the inferred clustering amplitude S8 ≡ σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5 by 2σ towards low values. Lastly, we use the hoopoe simulations to test the effect of neighbour-induced spatial correlations in the multiplicative bias. We find the impact on the recovered S8 of ignoring such correlations to be subdominant to statistical error at the current level of precision.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
Contributing Organization:
DES Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-07CH11359; SC0012704; AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1376073
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1392237; OSTI ID: 1426560
Report Number(s):
FERMILAB-PUB-17-291-E; arXiv:1708.01534; BNL-114252-2017-JA; 1614457
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 475, Issue 4; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 41 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (17)

Density split statistics: Cosmological constraints from counts and lensing in cells in DES Y1 and SDSS data journal July 2018
Cosmological simulations for combined-probe analyses: covariance and neighbour-exclusion bias journal August 2018
Euclid preparation : IV. Impact of undetected galaxies on weak-lensing shear measurements⋆ journal July 2019
Cosmic shear: Inference from forward models journal July 2019
Cosmological lensing ratios with DES Y1, SPT, and Planck journal May 2019
Weak lensing shear calibration with simulations of the HSC survey journal September 2018
Towards emulating cosmic shear data: revisiting the calibration of the shear measurements for the Kilo-Degree Survey journal April 2019
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: weak lensing shape catalogues journal August 2018
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clustering and Weak Lensing text January 2017
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing text January 2017
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Cosmological Constraints from Cosmic Shear text January 2017
Density split statistics: Cosmological constraints from counts and lensing in cells in DES Y1 and SDSS data text January 2017
Cosmological Simulations for Combined-Probe Analyses: Covariance and Neighbour-Exclusion Bias text January 2018
Towards emulating cosmic shear data: Revisiting the calibration of the shear measurements for the Kilo-Degree Survey text January 2018
Euclid Preparation IV. Impact of undetected galaxies on weak-lensing shear measurements text January 2019
Cosmic Shear: Inference from Forward Models text January 2019
Image Simulations for Strong and Weak Gravitational Lensing journal March 2020

Figures / Tables (17)