Cosmology constraints from shear peak statistics in Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data

Journal Article · Fri Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw2070· OSTI ID:1351749

Kacprzak, T.; Kirk, D.; Friedrich, O.; Amara, A.; Refregier, A.; Marian, L.; Dietrich, J. P.; Suchyta, E.; Aleksić, J.; Bacon, D.; Becker, M. R.; Bonnett, C.; Bridle, S. L.; Chang, C.; Eifler, T. F.; Hartley, W. G.; Huff, E. M.; Krause, E.; MacCrann, N.; Melchior, P. ; Nicola, A.; Samuroff, S.; Sheldon, E.; Troxel, M. A.; Weller, J.; Zuntz, J.; Abbott, T. M. C.; Abdalla, F. B.; Armstrong, R.; Benoit-Lévy, A.; Bernstein, G. M.; Bernstein, R. A.; Bertin, E.; Brooks, D.; Burke, D. L.; Rosell, A. Carnero; Kind, M. Carrasco; Carretero, J.; Castander, F. J.; Crocce, M.; D'Andrea, C. B.; da Costa, L. N.; Desai, S.; Diehl, H. T.; Evrard, A. E.; Neto, A. Fausti; Flaugher, B.; Fosalba, P.; Frieman, J.; Gerdes, D. W.; Goldstein, D. A.; Gruen, D.; Gruendl, R. A.; Gutierrez, G.; Honscheid, K.; Jain, B.; James, D. J.; Jarvis, M.; Kuehn, K.; Kuropatkin, N.; Lahav, O.; Lima, M.; March, M.; Marshall, J. L.; Martini, P.; Miller, C. J.; Miquel, R.; Mohr, J. J.; Nichol, R. C.; Nord, B.; Plazas, A. A.; Romer, A. K.; Roodman, A.; Rykoff, E. S.; Sanchez, E.; Scarpine, V.; Schubnell, M.; Sevilla-Noarbe, I.; Smith, R. C.; Soares-Santos, M.; Sobreira, F.; Swanson, M. E. C.; Tarle, G.; Thomas, D.; Vikram, V.; Walker, A. R.; Zhang, Y.

Shear peak statistics has gained a lot of attention recently as a practical alternative to the two-point statistics for constraining cosmological parameters. We perform a shear peak statistics analysis of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) data, using weak gravitational lensing measurements from a 139 deg² field. We measure the abundance of peaks identified in aperture mass maps, as a function of their signal-to-noise ratio, in the signal-to-noise range 0 < S/N < 4 . To predict the peak counts as a function of cosmological parameters, we use a suite of N-body simulations spanning 158 models with varying Ωm and σ8, fixing w = –1, Ωb = 0.04, h = 0.7 and ns = 1, to which we have applied the DES SV mask and redshift distribution. In our fiducial analysis we measure σ8(Ωm/0.3)^0.6 = 0.77 ± 0.07, after marginalizing over the shear multiplicative bias and the error on the mean redshift of the galaxy sample. We introduce models of intrinsic alignments, blending and source contamination by cluster members. These models indicate that peaks with S/N > 4 would require significant corrections, which is why we do not include them in our analysis. We compare our results to the cosmological constraints from the two-point analysis on the SV field and find them to be in good agreement in both the central value and its uncertainty. Lastly, we discuss prospects for future peak statistics analysis with upcoming DES data.

• 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); 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; AC02-76SF00515; AC02-07CH11359; SC0011726
• OSTI ID: 1351749
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1254143; OSTI ID: 1360807; OSTI ID: 1602520
• Report Number(s): BNL-113770-2017-JA; FERMILAB-PUB-15-566-AE; arXiv:1603.05040; TRN: US1701708
• Journal Information: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 463, Issue 4; ISSN 0035-8711
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
gravitational lensing: weak
methods: data analysis
methods: statistical
cosmological parameter
cosmology: observations
dark matter
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS