Open AccessCosmic statistics through weak lenses
Author(s) -
Munshi Dipak,
Coles Peter
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05018.x
Subject(s) - physics , weak gravitational lensing , smoothing , ansatz , gravitational lens , statistical physics , dark matter , cluster analysis , strong gravitational lensing , cosmology , scaling , gravitational lensing formalism , astrophysics , redshift , statistics , galaxy , quantum mechanics , geometry , mathematics
Many recent studies have demonstrated that scaling arguments, such as the so‐called hierarchical ansatz, are extremely useful in understanding the statistical properties of weak gravitational lensing. This is especially true on small angular scales (i.e. at high resolution), where the usual perturbative calculations of matter clustering no longer apply. We build on these studies in order to develop a complete picture of weak lensing at small smoothing angles. In particular, we study the full probability distribution function, bias and other multipoint statistics for the ‘hot spots’ of the convergence field induced by weak lensing, and relate these to the statistics of overdense regions in the underlying mass distribution. It is already known that weak lensing can constrain the background geometry of the Universe, but we further show that it can also provide valuable information about the statistics of collapsed objects and the physics of collisionless clustering. Our results are particularly important for future observations which will, at least initially, focus on small smoothing angles.