Inference from the small scales of cosmic shear with current and future Dark Energy Survey data

Journal Article · Sat Nov 05 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw2849· OSTI ID:1362160

MacCrann, N.; Aleksi?, J.; Amara, A.; Bridle, S. L.; Bruderer, C.; Chang, C.; Dodelson, S.; Eifler, T. F.; Huff, E. M.; Huterer, D.; Kacprzak, T.; Refregier, A.; Suchyta, E.; Wechsler, R. H.; Zuntz, J.; Abbott, T. M. C.; Allam, S.; Annis, J.; Armstrong, R.; Benoit-L?vy, A. ; Brooks, D.; Burke, D. L.; Carnero Rosell, A.; Carrasco Kind, M.; Carretero, J.; Castander, F. J.; Crocce, M.; Cunha, C. E.; da Costa, L. N.; Desai, S.; Diehl, H. T.; Dietrich, J. P.; Doel, P.; Evrard, A. E.; Flaugher, B.; Fosalba, P.; Gerdes, D. W.; Goldstein, D. A.; Gruen, D.; Gruendl, R. A.; Gutierrez, G.; Honscheid, K.; James, D. J.; Jarvis, M.; Krause, E.; Kuehn, K.; Kuropatkin, N.; Lima, M.; Marshall, J. L.; Melchior, P.; Menanteau, F.; Miquel, R.; Plazas, A. A.; Romer, A. K.; Rykoff, E. S.; Sanchez, E.; Scarpine, V.; Sevilla-Noarbe, I.; Sheldon, E.; Soares-Santos, M.; Swanson, M. E. C.; Tarle, G.; Thomas, D.; Vikram, V.

Cosmic shear is sensitive to fluctuations in the cosmological matter density field, including on small physical scales, where matter clustering is affected by baryonic physics in galaxies and galaxy clusters, such as star formation, supernovae feedback, and active galactic nuclei feedback. While muddying any cosmological information that is contained in small-scale cosmic shear measurements, this does mean that cosmic shear has the potential to constrain baryonic physics and galaxy formation. We perform an analysis of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) cosmic shear measurements, now extended to smaller scales, and using the Mead et al. (2015) halo model to account for baryonic feedback. While the SV data has limited statistical power, we demonstrate using a simulated likelihood analysis that the final DES data will have the statistical power to differentiate among baryonic feedback scenarios. We also explore some of the difficulties in interpreting the small scales in cosmic shear measurements, presenting estimates of the size of several other systematic effects that make inference from small scales difficult, including uncertainty in the modelling of intrinsic alignment on non-linear scales, ‘lensing bias’, and shape measurement selection effects. For the latter two, we make use of novel image simulations. In conclusion, while future cosmic shear data sets have the statistical power to constrain baryonic feedback scenarios, there are several systematic effects that require improved treatments, in order to make robust conclusions about baryonic feedback.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• Contributing Organization: The DES Collaboration
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0012704; AC02-07CH11359; AC02-76SF00515; AST-1138766; AYA2012-39559; ESP2013-48274; FPA2013-47986; 240672; 291329; 306478; SC0011726
• OSTI ID: 1362160
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1331123; OSTI ID: 1353202; OSTI ID: 1602502
• Report Number(s): BNL-113916-2017-JA; FERMILAB-PUB-16-303-A; arXiv:1608.01838
• Journal Information: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 465, Issue 3; ISSN 0035-8711
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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