No galaxy left behind: accurate measurements with the faintest objects in the Dark Energy Survey

Abstract

Accurate statistical measurement with large imaging surveys has traditionally required throwing away a sizable fraction of the data. This is because most measurements have have relied on selecting nearly complete samples, where variations in the composition of the galaxy population with seeing, depth, or other survey characteristics are small. We introduce a new measurement method that aims to minimize this wastage, allowing precision measurement for any class of stars or galaxies detectable in an imaging survey. We have implemented our proposal in Balrog, a software package which embeds fake objects in real imaging in order to accurately characterize measurement biases. We demonstrate this technique with an angular clustering measurement using Dark Energy Survey (DES) data. We first show that recovery of our injected galaxies depends on a wide variety of survey characteristics in the same way as the real data. We then construct a flux-limited sample of the faintest galaxies in DES, chosen specifically for their sensitivity to depth and seeing variations. Using the synthetic galaxies as randoms in the standard Landy-Szalay correlation function estimator suppresses the effects of variable survey selection by at least two orders of magnitude. With this correction, our measured angular clustering is found to be in excellent agreement with that of a matched sample drawn from much deeper, higher-resolution space-based Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS) imaging; over angular scales of $0.004^{\circ }<\theta <0.2^{\circ }$, we find a best-fit scaling amplitude between the DES and COSMOS measurements of $1.00\pm 0.09$. We expect this methodology to be broadly useful for extending the statistical reach of measurements in a wide variety of coming imaging surveys.

24 pages, 17 figures. This is the version accepted by MNRAS. Changes compared to the original version are very minimal; the biggest update is including a curve for a theoretical model in the clustering results

References in corpus (14)

• COSMOS Photometric Redshifts with 30-bands for 2-deg2
• The Dark Energy Camera
• Weak Gravitational Lensing with COSMOS: Galaxy Selection and Shape Measurements
• The Blanco Cosmology Survey: Data Acquisition, Processing, Calibration, Quality Diagnostics and Data Release
• Estimating the Redshift Distribution of Faint Galaxy Samples
• Methods for Rapidly Processing Angular Masks of Next-Generation Galaxy Surveys
• Photometric redshift analysis in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data
• Redshift distributions of galaxies in the DES Science Verification shear catalogue and implications for weak lensing
• Galaxy clustering, photometric redshifts and diagnosis of systematics in the DES Science Verification data
• Mapping and simulating systematics due to spatially-varying observing conditions in DES Science Verification data
• The angular correlations of galaxies in the COSMOS field
• Modelling the Transfer Function for the Dark Energy Survey
• The effect of redshift-space distortions on projected 2-pt clustering measurements
• Wide-Field Lensing Mass Maps from DES Science Verification Data: Methodology and Detailed Analysis

Cited by in corpus (74)

• The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy - an overview
• Weak lensing for precision cosmology
• Practical Weak Lensing Shear Measurement with Metacalibration
• The first-year shear catalog of the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam SSP Survey
• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Redshift distributions of the weak lensing source galaxies
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Redshift Calibration of the Weak Lensing Source Galaxies
• DES Y3 + KiDS-1000: Consistent cosmology combining cosmic shear surveys
• First Results from the Lyman Alpha Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization (LAGER) Survey: Cosmological Reionization at z ~ 7
• Cosmology constraints from shear peak statistics in Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data
• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Galaxy clustering for combined probes
• Weak-lensing mass calibration of redMaPPer galaxy clusters in Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data
• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing
• Shadows in the Dark: Low-Surface-Brightness Galaxies Discovered in the Dark Energy Survey
• Phenotypic redshifts with self-organizing maps: A novel method to characterize redshift distributions of source galaxies for weak lensing
• Characterization and Photometric Performance of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Software Pipeline
• Towards emulating cosmic shear data: Revisiting the calibration of the shear measurements for the Kilo-Degree Survey
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Clustering Redshifts -- Calibration of the Weak Lensing Source Redshift Distributions with redMaGiC and BOSS/eBOSS
• Cosmic Shear Cosmology Beyond 2-Point Statistics: A Combined Peak Count and Correlation Function Analysis of DES-Y1
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Galaxy clustering and systematics treatment for lens galaxy samples
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Measuring the Survey Transfer Function with Balrog
• Cosmology from large scale galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing with Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data
• Mapping and simulating systematics due to spatially-varying observing conditions in DES Science Verification data
• The Ly$\alpha$ Luminosity Function and Cosmic Reionization at $z\sim$ 7.0: a Tale of Two LAGER Fields
• Redshift inference from the combination of galaxy colors and clustering in a hierarchical Bayesian model
• Deep Chandra observations of NGC 1404: cluster plasma physics revealed by an infalling early-type galaxy
• CFHTLenS and RCSLenS: Testing Photometric Redshift Distributions Using Angular Cross-Correlations with Spectroscopic Galaxy Surveys
• Improving Galaxy Clustering Measurements with Deep Learning: analysis of the DECaLS DR7 data
• Detecting clusters of galaxies and active galactic nuclei in an eROSITA all-sky survey digital twin
• Gas sloshing regulates and records the evolution of the Fornax Cluster
• The Dark Energy Survey Year 3 and eBOSS: constraining galaxy intrinsic alignments across luminosity and colour space
• Mitigating contamination in LSS surveys: a comparison of methods
• A machine learning approach to galaxy properties: joint redshift-stellar mass probability distributions with Random Forest
• Redshift inference from the combination of galaxy colors and clustering in a hierarchical Bayesian model $-$ Application to realistic $N$-body simulations
• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: Validation of weak lensing cluster member contamination estimates from P(z) decomposition
• The Richness-to-Mass Relation of CAMIRA Galaxy Clusters from Weak-lensing Magnification in the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: cosmology from combined galaxy clustering and lensing -- validation on cosmological simulations
• Trans-Neptunian objects found in the first four years of the Dark Energy Survey
• Imaging Systematics and Clustering of DESI Main Targets
• Angular clustering properties of the DESI QSO target selection using DR9 Legacy Imaging Surveys
• Star-galaxy classification in the Dark Energy Survey Y1 dataset
• Cross-Correlation of Planck CMB Lensing with DESI-Like LRGs
• A Synthetic Roman Space Telescope High-Latitude Imaging Survey: Simulation Suite and the Impact of Wavefront Errors on Weak Gravitational Lensing
• Weak lensing magnification in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification Data
• The WaZP galaxy cluster sample of the Dark Energy Survey Year 1
• Local primordial non-Gaussianity from the large-scale clustering of photometric DESI luminous red galaxies
• The UV Luminosity Function of Protocluster Galaxies at $z\sim 4$: the Bright-end Excess and the Enhanced Star Formation Rate Density
• Removing Imaging Systematics from Galaxy Clustering Measurements with Obiwan : Application to the SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Emission Line Galaxy Sample
• Inference from the small scales of cosmic shear with current and future Dark Energy Survey data
• Organised Randoms: Learning and correcting for systematic galaxy clustering patterns in KiDS using self-organising maps
• Comparing Dark Energy Survey and HST-CLASH observations of the galaxy cluster RXC J2248.7-4431: implications for stellar mass versus dark matter
• A case study for measuring the relativistic dipole of a galaxy cross-correlation with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
• Using angular two-point correlations to self-calibrate the photometric redshift distributions of DECaLS DR9
• The PAU survey: Estimating galaxy photometry with deep learning
• Effects of Completeness and Purity on Cluster Dark Energy Constraints
• Linear Systematics Mitigation in Galaxy Clustering in the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Data
• Simulating image coaddition with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: I. Simulation methodology and general results
• Metadetection Weak Lensing for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Redshift Calibration of the MagLim Lens Sample from the combination of SOMPZ and clustering and its impact on Cosmology
• Noise from Undetected Sources in Dark Energy Survey Images
• CHORUS IV: Mapping the Spatially Inhomogeneous Cosmic Reionization with Subaru HSC
• Integrated Sachs-Wolfe map reconstruction in the presence of systematic errors
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Constraints on cosmological parameters and galaxy bias models from galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing using the redMaGiC sample
• KiDS-Legacy: Angular galaxy clustering from deep surveys with complex selection effects
• Euclid: Relativistic effects in the dipole of the 2-point correlation function
• High-Significance Detection of Correlation Between the Unresolved Gamma-Ray Background and the Large Scale Cosmic Structure
• A Framework for Measuring Weak-Lensing Magnification Using the Fundamental Plane
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Deep Field Optical + Near-Infrared Images and Catalogue
• Blending and obscuration in weak lensing magnification
• Synthetic Galaxy Clusters and Observations Based on Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Data
• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Photometric Data Set for Cosmology
• DELVE Milky Way Satellite Galaxy Census I: Satellite Population and Survey Selection Function in DES, DELVE, and Pan-STARRS
• Galaxies in X-ray Selected Clusters and Groups in Dark Energy Survey Data II: Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling of the Red-Sequence Galaxy Luminosity Function
• Measurement of the Hubble constant using the Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Gold galaxy catalogue and the fourth Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue
• Non-linear infusion of intrinsic alignment and source clustering: impact on non-Gaussian cosmic shear statistics