Search

Halo models and halo occupation distributions (HODs) are important tools to model the galaxy and matter distribution. We present and assess a new method for constraining the parameters of HODs using the gravitational lensing shear around galaxy pairs, galaxy-galaxy-galaxy-lensing (G3L). In contrast to galaxy-galaxy-lensing, G3L is sensitive to correlations between the per-halo numbers of galaxies from different populations. We use G3L to probe these correlations and test the default hypothesis that they are negligible. We derive a halo model for G3L and validate it with realistic mock data from the Millennium Simulation and a semi-analytic galaxy model. Then, we analyse public data from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), the VISTA Infrared Kilo-Degree Galaxy Survey (VIKING) and data from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly Survey (GAMA) to infer the HODs of galaxies at $z<0.5$ in five different stellar mass bins between $10^{8.5}h^{-2} M_\odot$ and $10^{11.5}h^{-2} M_\odot$ and two colours (red and blue), as well as correlations between satellite numbers. The analysis recovers the true HODs in the simulated data within the $68\%$ credibility range. The inferred HODs vary significantly with colour and stellar mass. There is also strong evidence ($>3\sigma$) for correlations, increasing with halo mass, between the numbers of red and blue satellites and galaxies with stellar masses below $10^{10} \Msun. Possible causes of these correlations are the selection of similar galaxies in different samples, the survey flux limit, or physical mechanisms like a fixed ratio between the satellite numbers of distinct populations. The decorrelation for halos with smaller masses is probably an effect of shot noise by low-occupancy halos. The inferred HODs can be used to complement galaxy-galaxy-lensing or galaxy clustering HOD studies or as input to cosmological analyses and improved mock galaxy catalogues., Comment: 20 pages + Appendix, 14 Figures. Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics. Abstract is abridged

Galaxy models predict a tight relation between the clustering of galaxies and dark matter on cosmological scales, but predictions differ notably in the details. We used this opportunity and tested two semi-analytic models by the Munich and Durham groups with data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS). For the test we measured the scale-dependent galaxy bias factor $b(k)$ and correlation factor $r(k)$ from linear to non-linear scales of $k\approx10\,h\,\rm Mpc^{-1}$ at two redshifts $\bar{z}=0.35,0.51$ for galaxies with stellar mass between $5\times10^9$ and $3\times10^{11}\,h_{\rm 70}^{-2}\,{\rm M}_\odot$. Our improved gravitational lensing technique accounts for the intrinsic alignment of sources and the magnification of lens galaxies for better constraints for the galaxy-matter correlation $r(k)$. Galaxy bias in CFHTLenS increases with $k$ and stellar mass, it is colour-dependent, revealing the individual footprints of galaxy types. Despite a reasonable model agreement for the relative change with both scale and galaxy properties, there is a clear conflict for $b(k)$ with no model preference: the model galaxies are too weakly clustered. This may flag a model problem at $z\gtrsim0.3$ for all stellar masses. As in the models, however, there is a high correlation $r(k)$ between matter and galaxy density on all scales, and galaxy bias is typically consistent with a deterministic bias on linear scales. Only our blue and low-mass galaxies of about $7\times10^9\,h_{\rm 70}^{-2}\,{\rm M}_\odot$ at $\bar{z}=0.51$ show, contrary to the models, a weak tendency towards a stochastic bias on linear scales where $r_{\rm ls}=0.75\pm0.14\,{\rm(stat.)}\pm0.06\,{\rm(sys.)}$. This result is of interest for cosmological probes, such as $E_{\rm G}$, that rely on a deterministic galaxy bias., Comment: 17+13(Appendix) pages, 13+6 figures; Figs. A.1-A.4 are key figures; accepted by A&A, in press; Monte-Carlo realisations of $b(k)$ and $r(k)$ will be provided as online material on http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/

We explore an alternative method to the usual shear correlation function approach for the estimation of aperture mass statistics in weak lensing survey data. Our approach builds on the direct estimator method of Schneider (1998). In this paper, to test and validate the methodology, we focus on the aperture mass dispersion. After computing the signal and noise for a weighted set of measured ellipticites we show how the direct estimator can be made into a linear order algorithm that enables a fast and efficient computation. We then investigate the applicability of the direct estimator approach in the presence of a real survey mask with holes and chip gaps. For this we use a large ensemble of full ray-tracing mock simulations. By using various weighting schemes for combining information from different apertures we find that inverse variance weighting the individual aperture estimates with an aperture completeness greater than 70 per cent coverage yields an answer that is in close agreement with the standard correlation function approach. We then apply this approach to the CFHTLenS as pilot scheme and find that our method recovers to high accuracy the Kilbinger (2013) result for the variance of both the E and B mode signal, after we correct the catalogue for the shear bias in the lensfit algorithm for pairs closer than 9". We then explore the cosmological information content of the direct estimator using the Fisher information approach. We show that there is a only modest loss in cosmological information from the rejection of apertures that are of low completeness. This method unlocks the door to fast and efficient methods for recovering higher order aperture mass statistics in linear order operations., Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures. Submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome. v2: updated MNRAS template

Several semi-analytic models (SAMs) try to explain how galaxies form, evolve and interact inside the dark matter large-scale structure. These SAMs can be tested by comparing their predictions for galaxy-galaxy-galaxy-lensing (G3L), which is weak gravitational lensing around galaxy pairs, with observations. We evaluate the SAMs by Henriques et al. (2015; H15) and by Lagos et al. (2012; L12), implemented in the Millennium Run, by comparing their predictions for G3L to observations at smaller scales than previous studies and also for pairs of lens galaxies from different populations. We compare the G3L signal predicted by the SAMs to measurements in the overlap of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey (GAMA), the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), and the VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy survey (VIKING), splitting lens galaxies into two colour and five stellar-mass samples. Using an improved G3L estimator, we measure the three-point correlation of the matter distribution for mixed lens pairs with galaxies from different samples, and unmixed lens pairs with galaxies from the same sample. Predictions by the H15 SAM agree with the observations for all colour-selected and all but one stellar-mass-selected sample with 95% confidence. Deviations occur for lenses with stellar masses below $9.5h^{-2}\mathrm{M}_\odot$ at scales below $0.2h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$. Predictions by the L12 SAM for stellar-mass selected samples and red galaxies are significantly higher than observed, while the predicted signal for blue galaxy pairs is too low. The L12 SAM predicts more pairs of small stellar-mass and red galaxies than the H15 SAM and the observations, as well as fewer pairs of blue galaxies. Likely explanations are different treatments of environmental effects by the SAMs and different models of the initial mass function. We conclude that G3L provides a stringent test for models of galaxy formation and evolution., Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, replaced with version accepted to Astronomy & Astrophysics after considering referees comments

We present a mitigation strategy to reduce the impact of non-linear galaxy bias on the joint `$3 \times 2 $pt' cosmological analysis of weak lensing and galaxy surveys. The $\Psi$-statistics that we adopt are based on Complete Orthogonal Sets of E/B Integrals (COSEBIs). As such they are designed to minimise the contributions to the observable from the smallest physical scales where models are highly uncertain. We demonstrate that $\Psi$-statistics carry the same constraining power as the standard two-point galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing statistics, but are significantly less sensitive to scale-dependent galaxy bias. Using two galaxy bias models, motivated by halo-model fits to data and simulations, we quantify the error in a standard $3 \times 2$pt analysis where constant galaxy bias is assumed. Even when adopting conservative angular scale cuts, that degrade the overall cosmological parameter constraints, we find of order $1 \sigma$ biases for Stage III surveys on the cosmological parameter $S_8 = \sigma_8(\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3)^{\alpha}$. This arises from a leakage of the smallest physical scales to all angular scales in the standard two-point correlation functions. In contrast, when analysing $\Psi$-statistics under the same approximation of constant galaxy bias, we show that the bias on the recovered value for $S_8$ can be decreased by a factor of $\sim 2$, with less conservative scale cuts. Given the challenges in determining accurate galaxy bias models in the highly non-linear regime, we argue that $3 \times 2$pt analyses should move towards new statistics that are less sensitive to the smallest physical scales., Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, accepted to be published in MNRAS

Magnification changes the observed number counts of galaxies on the sky. This biases the observed tangential shear profiles around galaxies, the so-called galaxy-galaxy lensing (GGL) signal, and the related excess mass profile. Correspondingly, inference of physical quantities, such as the mean mass profile of halos around galaxies, are affected by magnification effects. We use simulated shear and galaxy data of the Millennium Simulation to quantify the effect on shear and mass estimates from magnified lens and source number counts. The former are due to the large-scale matter distribution in the foreground of the lenses, the latter are caused by magnification of the source population by the matter associated with the lenses. The GGL signal is calculated from the simulations by an efficient fast-Fourier transform that can also be applied to real data. The numerical treatment is complemented by a leading-order analytical description of the magnification effects, which is shown to fit the numerical shear data well. We find the magnification effect is strongest for steep galaxy luminosity functions and high redshifts. For a lens redshift of $z_\mathrm{d}=0.83$, a limiting magnitude of $22\,\mathrm{mag}$ in the $r$-band and a source redshift of $z_\mathrm{s}=0.99$, we find that a magnification correction changes the shear profile up to $45\%$ and the mass is biased by up to $55 \%$. For medium-redshift galaxies the relative change in shear and mass is typically a few percent. As expected, the sign of the bias depends on the local slope of the lens luminosity function $\alpha_\mathrm{d}$, where the mass is biased low for $\alpha_\mathrm{d}<1$ and biased high for $\alpha_\mathrm{d}>1$. Whereas the magnification effect of sources is rarely than more $1\%$, the statistical power of future weak lensing surveys warrants correction for this effect., Comment: this version fixes a typo in the prefactor of equation (14)

Galaxy-galaxy-galaxy lensing (G3L) is a powerful tool for constraining the three-point correlation between the galaxy and matter distribution and thereby models of galaxy evolution. We propose three improvements to current measurements of G3L: (i) a weighting of lens galaxies according to their redshift difference, (ii) adaptive binning of the three-point correlation function, and (iii) accounting for the effect of lens magnification by the cosmic large-scale structure. Improvement (i) is designed to improve the precision of the G3L measurement, whereas improvements (ii) and (iii) remove biases of the estimator. We further show how the G3L signal can be converted from angular into physical scales. The improvements were tested on simple mock data and simulated data based on the Millennium Run with an implemented semi-analytic galaxy model. Our improvements increase the signal-to-noise ratio by 35 % on average at angular scales between 0.1 arcmin and 10 arcmin and physical scales between $0.02$ and $2 \, h^{-1}\, \textrm{Mpc}$. They also remove the bias of the G3L estimator at angular scales below 1 arcmin, which was originally up to 40 %. The signal due to lens magnification is approximately 10 % of the total signal., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, replaced by revised version accepted for A&A after addressing referees comments

Galaxies are biased tracers of the matter density on cosmological scales. For future tests of galaxy models, we refine and assess a method to measure galaxy biasing as function of physical scale $k$ with weak gravitational lensing. This method enables us to reconstruct the galaxy bias factor $b(k)$ as well as the galaxy-matter correlation $r(k)$ on spatial scales between $0.01\,h\,{\rm Mpc^{-1}}\lesssim k\lesssim10\,h\,{\rm Mpc^{-1}}$ for redshift-binned lens galaxies below redshift $z\lesssim0.6$. In the refinement, we account for an intrinsic alignment of source ellipticities, and we correct for the magnification bias of the lens galaxies, relevant for the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal, to improve the accuracy of the reconstructed $r(k)$. For simulated data, the reconstructions achieve an accuracy of $3-7\%$ (68\% confidence level) over the above $k$-range for a survey area and a typical depth of contemporary ground-based surveys. Realistically the accuracy is, however, probably reduced to about $10-15\%$, mainly by systematic uncertainties in the assumed intrinsic source alignment, the fiducial cosmology, and the redshift distributions of lens and source galaxies (in that order). Furthermore, our reconstruction technique employs physical templates for $b(k)$ and $r(k)$ that elucidate the impact of central galaxies and the halo-occupation statistics of satellite galaxies on the scale-dependence of galaxy bias, which we discuss in the paper. In a first demonstration, we apply this method to previous measurements in the Garching-Bonn-Deep Survey and give a physical interpretation of the lens population., Comment: 31 pages, 16 figures; corrected typos in Eqs. (31), (34), and (36)

We compute the spherical-sky weak-lensing power spectrum of the shear and convergence. We discuss various approximations, such as flat-sky, and first- and second- order Limber equations for the projection. We find that the impact of adopting these approximations is negligible when constraining cosmological parameters from current weak lensing surveys. This is demonstrated using data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS). We find that the reported tension with Planck Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy results cannot be alleviated. For future large-scale surveys with unprecedented precision, we show that the spherical second-order Limber approximation will provide sufficient accuracy. In this case, the cosmic-shear power spectrum is shown to be in agreement with the full projection at the sub-percent level for l > 3, with the corresponding errors an order of magnitude below cosmic variance for all l. When computing the two-point shear correlation function, we show that the flat-sky fast Hankel transformation results in errors below two percent compared to the full spherical transformation. In the spirit of reproducible research, our numerical implementation of all approximations and the full projection are publicly available within the package nicaea at http://www.cosmostat.org/software/nicaea., Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. Matches published version (MNRAS, 2017, 472, 2126)

In recent years, solid-state spin systems have emerged as promising candidates for quantum information processing (QIP). Prominent examples are the Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center in diamond, phosphorous dopants in silicon (Si:P), rare-earth ions in solids and V$_{\text{Si}}$-centers in Silicon-carbide (SiC). The Si:P system has demonstrated, that by eliminating the electron spin of the dopant, its nuclear spins can yield exceedingly long spin coherence times. For NV centers, however, a proper charge state for storage of nuclear spin qubit coherence has not been identified yet. Here, we identify and characterize the positively charged NV center as an electron-spin-less and optically inactive state by utilizing the nuclear spin qubit as a probe. We control the electronic charge and spin utilizing nanometer scale gate electrodes. We achieve a lengthening of the nuclear spin coherence times by a factor of 20. Surprisingly, the new charge state allows switching the optical response of single nodes facilitating full individual addressability., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

In weak gravitational lensing, weighted quadrupole moments of the brightness profile in galaxy images are a common way to estimate gravitational shear. We employ general adaptive moments (GLAM) to study causes of shear bias on a fundamental level and for a practical definition of an image ellipticity. The GLAM ellipticity has useful properties for any chosen weight profile: the weighted ellipticity is identical to that of isophotes of elliptical images, and in absence of noise and pixellation it is always an unbiased estimator of reduced shear. We show that moment-based techniques, adaptive or unweighted, are similar to a model-based approach in the sense that they can be seen as imperfect fit of an elliptical profile to the image. Due to residuals in the fit, moment-based estimates of ellipticities are prone to underfitting bias when inferred from observed images. The estimation is fundamentally limited mainly by pixellation which destroys information on the original, pre-seeing image. We give an optimized estimator for the pre-seeing GLAM ellipticity and quantify its bias for noise-free images. To deal with pixel noise, we consider a Bayesian approach where the posterior of the GLAM ellipticity can be inconsistent with the true ellipticity if we do not properly account for our ignorance about fit residuals. This underfitting bias is S/N-independent but changes with the pre-seeing brightness profile and the correlation or heterogeneity of pixel noise over the post-seeing image. Furthermore, when inferring a constant ellipticity or, more relevantly, constant shear from a source sample with a distribution of intrinsic properties (sizes, centroid positions, intrinsic shapes), an additional, now noise-dependent bias arises towards low S/N if incorrect priors for the intrinsic properties are used. We discuss the origin of this prior bias., Comment: 18 pages; 5 figures; accepted by A&A after major revision, especially of Sect. 3.3 that corrects the previous discussion on the bias by marginalization