Lifting weak lensing degeneracies with a field-based likelihood

Abstract

We present a field-based approach to the analysis of cosmic shear data to infer jointly cosmological parameters and the dark matter distribution. This forward modelling approach samples the cosmological parameters and the initial matter fluctuations, using a physical gravity model to link the primordial fluctuations to the non-linear matter distribution. Cosmological parameters are sampled and updated consistently through the forward model, varying (1) the initial matter power spectrum, (2) the geometry through the distance-redshift relationship, and (3) the growth of structure and light-cone effects. Our approach extracts more information from the data than methods based on two-point statistics. We find that this field-based approach lifts the strong degeneracy between the cosmological matter density, ${\Omega }_{\mathrm{m}}$, and the fluctuation amplitude, ${\sigma }_8$, providing tight constraints on these parameters from weak lensing data alone. In the simulated four-bin tomographic experiment we consider, the field-based likelihood yields marginal uncertainties on ${\sigma }_8$ and ${\Omega }_{\mathrm{m}}$ that are, respectively, a factor of 3 and 5 smaller than those from a two-point power spectrum analysis applied to the same underlying data.

Accepted in MNRAS

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• Persistent homology in cosmic shear II: A tomographic analysis of DES-Y1
• Towards a full $w$CDM map-based analysis for weak lensing surveys
• A simulation-based inference pipeline for cosmic shear with the Kilo-Degree Survey
• Reconstructing dark matter distribution with peculiar velocities: Bayesian forward modelling with corrections for inhomogeneous Malmquist bias
• Field-Based Physical Inference From Peculiar Velocity Tracers
• The Information Content of Projected Galaxy Fields
• Weak Lensing Trispectrum and Kurt-Spectra
• Fisher matrix for the angular power spectrum of multi-tracer galaxy surveys