Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2004-03-10
Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 353 (2004) 529
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
23 pages, 13 figures, matches MNRAS accepted version. This is a preprint of an Article accepted for publication in Monthly Not
Scientific paper
10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.08090.x
Galaxy-galaxy lensing has emerged as a powerful probe of the dark matter halos of galaxies, but is subject to contamination if intrinsically aligned satellites of the lens galaxy are used as part of the source sample. We present a measurement of this intrinsic shear using 200,747 lens galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic sample and a sample of satellites selected using photometric redshifts. The mean intrinsic shear at transverse separations of 30--446$h^{-1}$ kpc is constrained to be $-0.0062<\Delta\gamma<+0.0066$ (99.9 per cent confidence, including identified systematics), which limits contamination of the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal to at most $\sim 15$ per cent on these scales. We present these limits as a function of transverse separation and lens luminosity. We furthermore investigate shear calibration biases in the SDSS, which can also affect galaxy-galaxy lensing, and conclude that the shear amplitude is calibrated to better than 18 per cent. This includes noise-induced calibration biases in the ellipticity, which are small for the sample considered here, but which can be more important if low signal-to-noise or poorly resolved source galaxies are used.
Blake Cullen
Brinkmann Jonathan
Budavari Tamas
Connolly Andrew
Csabai István
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