Work

Measuring the mass distribution of voids with stacked weak lensing

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: We study the prospects for measuring the dark matter distribution of voids with stacked weak lensing. We select voids from a large set of N-body simulations and explore their lensing signals with the full ray-tracing simulations including the effect of the large-scale structure along the line of sight. The lensing signals are compared with simple void model predictions to infer the three-dimensional mass distribution of voids. We show that the stacked weak lensing signals are detected at a significant level (S/N ≥ 5) for a 5000 degree2 survey area, for a wide range of void radii up to ∼50 Mpc. The error from the galaxy shape noise little affects lensing signals at large scale. It is also found that dense ridges around voids have a great impact on the weak lensing signals, suggesting that proper modelling of the void density profile including surrounding ridges is essential for extracting the average total underdense mass of voids.

Source: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stt521

Authors: Yuichi Higuchi, Masamune Oguri, Takashi Hamana

Institutions: The University of Tokyo, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Language: English

Topic: Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Awards: Studying Dark Energy with the Evolution of Cosmic Structure, Developement of a wide field gravitational lensing ray-tracing numerical simulation technique for next generation surveys