Emulating the CFHTLenS weak lensing data: Cosmological constraints from moments and Minkowski functionals

Andrea Petri, Jia Liu, Zoltán Haiman, Morgan May, Lam Hui, and Jan M. Kratochvil
Phys. Rev. D 91, 103511 – Published 15 May 2015

Abstract

Weak gravitational lensing is a powerful cosmological probe, with non-Gaussian features potentially containing the majority of the information. We examine constraints on the parameter triplet (Ωm,w,σ8) from non-Gaussian features of the weak lensing convergence field, including a set of moments (up to fourth order) and Minkowski functionals, using publicly available data from the 154deg2 CFHTLenS survey. We utilize a suite of ray-tracing N-body simulations spanning 91 points in (Ωm,w,σ8) parameter space, replicating the galaxy sky positions, redshifts and shape noise in the CFHTLenS catalogs. We then build an emulator that interpolates the simulated descriptors as a function of (Ωm,w,σ8), and use it to compute the likelihood function and parameter constraints. We employ a principal component analysis to reduce dimensionality and to help stabilize the constraints with respect to the number of bins used to construct each statistic. Using the full set of statistics, we find Σ8σ8(Ωm/0.27)0.55=0.75±0.04 (68% C.L.), in agreement with previous values. We find that constraints on the (Ωm,σ8) doublet from the Minkowski functionals suffer a strong bias. However, high-order moments break the (Ωm,σ8) degeneracy and provide a tight constraint on these parameters with no apparent bias. The main contribution comes from quartic moments of derivatives.

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  • Received 20 March 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.103511

© 2015 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Andrea Petri1,2,*, Jia Liu3, Zoltán Haiman3, Morgan May2, Lam Hui1, and Jan M. Kratochvil4

  • 1Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
  • 2Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA
  • 3Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
  • 4Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, Durban 4000, South Africa

  • *apetri@phys.columbia.edu

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Vol. 91, Iss. 10 — 15 May 2015

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