Spurious Shear from the Atmosphere in Ground-Based Weak Lensing Observations

Abstract

Weak lensing observations have the potential to be even more powerful than cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations in constraining cosmological parameters. However, the practical limits to weak lensing observations are not known. Most theoretical studies of weak lensing constraints on cosmology assume that the only limits are shot noise on small scales, and cosmic variance on large scales. For future large surveys, shot noise will be so low that other, systematic errors will likely dominate. Here we examine a potential source of additive systematic error for ground-based observations: spurious power induced by the atmosphere. We show that this limit will not be a significant factor even in future massive surveys such as LSST.

accepted to ApJ Letters

References in corpus (13)

• Detection of weak gravitational lensing distortions of distant galaxies by cosmic dark matter at large scales
• Detection of Weak Gravitational Lensing by Large-scale Structure
• Shapes and Shears, Stars and Smears: Optimal Measurements for Weak Lensing
• Cosmological Model Predictions for Weak Lensing: Linear and Nonlinear Regimes
• A New Shear Estimator for Weak Lensing Observations
• Baryons and weak lensing power spectra
• Effect of Hot Baryons on the Weak-Lensing Shear Power Spectrum
• The Mass distribution of the Most Luminous X-ray Cluster RXJ1347.5-1145 from Gravitational Lensing
• Weak Lensing from Space III: Cosmological Parameters
• Cosmic shear as a tool for precision cosmology: minimising intrinsic galaxy alignment-lensing interference
• LSST: a Complementary Probe of Dark Energy
• Large scale systematic signals in weak lensing surveys
• Inhomogeneous systematic signals in cosmic shear observations

Cited by in corpus (18)

• The Shear TEsting Programme 2: Factors affecting high precision weak lensing analyses
• COSMOS: 3D weak lensing and the growth of structure
• Cosmological Constraints From the 100 Square Degree Weak Lensing Survey
• Two Windows on Acceleration and Gravitation: Dark Energy or New Gravity?
• Distance, Growth Factor, and Dark Energy Constraints from Photometric Baryon Acoustic Oscillation and Weak Lensing Measurements
• The impact of high spatial frequency atmospheric distortions on weak lensing measurements
• Spurious Shear in Weak Lensing with LSST
• Weighing the Universe with Photometric Redshift Surveys and the Impact on Dark Energy Forecasts
• Atmospheric PSF Interpolation for Weak Lensing in Short Exposure Imaging Data
• Testing PSF Interpolation In Weak Lensing With Real Data
• A Comparison of Weak Lensing Measurements From Ground- and Space-Based Facilities
• Image Ellipticity from Atmospheric Aberrations
• Toward understanding the anisotropic point spread function of Suprime-Cam and its impact on cosmic shear measurement
• Probing Dark Energy with the Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope
• Diagnosing space telescope misalignment and jitter using stellar images
• Weak lensing ellipticities in a strong lensing regime
• Properties of Ellipticity Correlation with Atmospheric Structure from Gemini South
• Lower bounds on photometric redshift errors from Type Ia supernovae templates