How well can we determine cluster mass profiles from weak lensing

By H. Hoekstra. 2002

163 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Weak gravitational lensing provides a direct way to study the mass distribution of clusters of galaxies at large radii. Unfortunately, large-scale structure along the line of sight also contributes to the lensing signal,and consequently affects the measurements. We quantify the effect of distant uncorrelated large-scale structure on the inferred mass profile of clusters as measured from weak lensing. We consider Navarro, Frenk & White profiles, and find that large-scale structure is a major source of uncertainty for most practical situations, when a model, with mass M 2 0 0 and concentration parameter c as free parameters, is fitted to the observations. We find that the best constraints are found for clusters at intermediate redshifts (z 0.3). For a cluster at z = 0.3, optimal results are obtained when the lensing signal is measured out to 10-15 arcmin. Measurements at larger radii do not improve the accuracy with which the profile can be determined, contrary to what is expected when the contribution from large-scale structure is ignored. The true uncertainties in M 2 0 0 and the concentration parameter c are ∼2 times larger than when distant large-scale structure is not included in the error budget.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e3e9af8f9f180726e84ca0e1b413b8aacf35fa31

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Citations in the corpus

The relation between velocity dispersion and mass in simulated clusters of galaxies: dependence on the tracer and the baryonic physics (2013, background): “…condition of equilibrium of the intracluster plasma (e.g. Ettori et al. 2002) or galaxies (e.g. Katgert et al. 2004) within the cluster potential well, or by measuring the gravitational lensing distortion of the images of background galaxies by the cluster gravitational field (e.g. Hoekstra 2003).”
CLASH: JOINT ANALYSIS OF STRONG-LENSING, WEAK-LENSING SHEAR, AND MAGNIFICATION DATA FOR 20 GALAXY CLUSTERS (2015, background): “…δij , (20) with sML and sMMAP the ML and MMAP solutions, respectively; C lss is due to uncorrelated large-scale structure (LSS) projected along the line of sight (Hoekstra 2003; Umetsu et al. 2011a); C int accounts for the intrinsic variations of the projected cluster mass profile (Gruen et…”
The Canadian Cluster Comparison Project: detailed study of systematics and updated weak lensing masses (2015, background): “The uncertainties in the mass estimates include the contribution from distant large-scale structure (Hoekstra 2001, 2003; Hoekstra et al. 2011).”
A comparison of weak-lensing masses and X-ray properties of galaxy clusters (2007, methodology): “Similarly, we follow Hoekstra (2003) to estimate the errors for the NFW model fits.”
Weighing the Giants – III. Methods and measurements of accurate galaxy cluster weak-lensing masses (2012, background): “…and uncorrelated structure along the line of sight contribute 20-25% scatter to individual mass measurements, no including the statistical uncertainty due to the finite numberof lensed sources (Hoekstra 2003; Corless & King 2007; Becker & Kravtso 2011; Bahé et al. 2012; Hoekstra et al. 2011).”
LoCuSS: comparison of observed X-ray and lensing galaxy cluster scaling relations with simulations (2008, background): “For example, Hoekstra (2003) investigated effects of uncorrelated LSS on weak lensing mass measurements, showing that the accuracy of the measured mass of an NFW model does not improve once the outer radius for the fitting reaches the angular scale ∼15′.”
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: weak lensing mass calibration of redMaPPer galaxy clusters (2018, background): “…cluster, the covariance of the profile at radii θ i, θ j due to uncorrelated large-scale structure (uLSS) can be written as (e.g. Schneider et al. 1998; Hoekstra 2003; Umetsu et al. 2011) CuLSSij = 〈 −1crit〉−2 ∫ d 2π Pκ ( )J2( θi)J2( θj ) , (17) where Pκ is the power spectrum of the convergence,…”
Gravitational lensing (2010, background): “The authors of [196] estimated that projected large-scale structure approximately doubles the error budget for weak-lensing cluster mass estimates.”
Detailed cluster lensing profiles at large radii and the impact on cluster weak lensing studies (2011, background): “In the reduced shear fitting above, we have considered only intrinsic shapes of galaxies as a source of the error, i.e., ignored the contribution of the large-scale structure (cosmic shear) to the error (e.g., Hoekstra 2003; Dodelson 2004; Hoekstra et al. 2011).”
A WEAK LENSING STUDY OF X-RAY GROUPS IN THE COSMOS SURVEY: FORM AND EVOLUTION OF THE MASS–LUMINOSITY RELATION (2009, methodology): “A notable advantage of this method is that measurements are unaffected by uncorrelated mass along the line-of-sight whereas mass estimates for individually detected clusters are subject to ∼ 20% uncertainties (Metzler et al. 2001; Hoekstra 2003; de Putter & White 2005).”
Masses of Galaxy Clusters from Gravitational Lensing (2013, background): “This work was extended in Hoekstra (2003) who studied how cosmic noise limits the precision of the determination of mass density profiles from weak lensing.”
ON THE ACCURACY OF WEAK-LENSING CLUSTER MASS RECONSTRUCTIONS (2010, methodology): “Although in practice different methods can be used to es- timate the total mass using the observed shear field (King & Schneider 2001; Hoekstra 2003; Dodelson 2004; Maturi et al. 2005; Corless & King 2008; Marian et al. 2010; Oguri et al. 2010), in this study we adopt a specific model in which the…”
Lensing and x-ray mass estimates of clusters (simulations) (2012, background): “…have been discussed in detail in several papers: uncorrelated structures introduce a noise in the mass estimates and their contribution to the total error budget is comparable to the statistical errors (Cen 1997; Metzler et al. 1999; Hoekstra 2001, 2003; White & Vale 2004; Hoekstra et al. 2011).”
CLASH: WEAK-LENSING SHEAR-AND-MAGNIFICATION ANALYSIS OF 20 GALAXY CLUSTERS (2014, background): “The relative contribution of projected uncorrelated LSS noise increases with increasing radius (Figure 3), so that the effect of including C lss is to further downweight the lensing signal in the outer regions especially beyond θ ∼ 10′ (Hoekstra 2003).”
Weighing the Giants - I. Weak-lensing masses for 51 massive galaxy clusters: project overview, data analysis methods and cluster images (2012, background): “Mass in the infall region of clusters (e.g., filaments and infalling groups) and/or unassociated structures along the line of sight can similarly bias individual mass measurements (Hoekstra 2001, 2003).”
LoCuSS: Subaru Weak Lensing Study of 30 Galaxy Clusters (2009, methodology): “However, we checked that the cosmic shear contamination is insignificant, because the shot noise turns out to be more significant than assumed in Hoekstra (2003), due to a smaller number of galaxies used in the lensing analysis after our background galaxy selection (see Oguri et al. 2010 for the…”
Combined strong and weak lensing analysis of 28 clusters from the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey (2011, background): “It is known that the matter fluctuations along the lineof-sight contributes to the total error budget (e.g., Hoekstra 2003; Hoekstra et al. 2011; Dodelson 2004; Gruen et al. 2011).”