Simulations of Wide-Field Weak Lensing Surveys I: Basic Statistics and Non-Gaussian Effects

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

11 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Corrected typo in the equation of survey window f

Scientific paper

10.1088/0004-637X/701/2/945

We study the lensing convergence power spectrum and its covariance for a standard LCDM cosmology. We run 400 cosmological N-body simulations and use the outputs to perform a total of 1000 independent ray-tracing simulations. We compare the simulation results with analytic model predictions. The semi-analytic model based on Smith et al.(2003) fitting formula underestimates the convergence power by ~30% at arc-minute angular scales. For the convergence power spectrum covariance, the halo model reproduces the simulation results remarkably well over a wide range of angular scales and source redshifts. The dominant contribution at small angular scales comes from the sample variance due to the number fluctuations of halos in a finite survey volume. The signal-to-noise ratio for the convergence power spectrum is degraded by the non-Gaussian covariances by up to a factor 5 for a weak lensing survey to z_s ~1. The probability distribution of the convergence power spectrum estimators, among the realizations, is well approximated by a chi-square distribution with broadened variance given by the non-Gaussian covariance, but has a larger positive tail. The skewness and kurtosis have non-negligible values especially for a shallow survey. We argue that a prior knowledge on the full distribution may be needed to obtain an unbiased estimate on the ensemble averaged band power at each angular scale from a finite volume survey.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Simulations of Wide-Field Weak Lensing Surveys I: Basic Statistics and Non-Gaussian Effects does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Simulations of Wide-Field Weak Lensing Surveys I: Basic Statistics and Non-Gaussian Effects, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Simulations of Wide-Field Weak Lensing Surveys I: Basic Statistics and Non-Gaussian Effects will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-134725

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.