Testing the reliability of weak lensing cluster detections

Abstract

We study the reliability of dark-matter halo detections with three different linear filters applied to weak-lensing data. We use ray-tracing in the multiple lens-plane approximation through a large cosmological simulation to construct realizations of cosmic lensing by large-scale structures between redshifts zero and two. We apply the filters mentioned above to detect peaks in the weak-lensing signal and compare them with the true population of dark matter halos present in the simulation. We confirm the stability and performance of a filter optimized for suppressing the contamination by large-scale structure. It allows the reliable detection of dark-matter halos with masses above a few times 1e13 M_sun/h with a fraction of spurious detections below ~10%. For sources at redshift two, 50% of the halos more massive than ~7e13 M_sun/h are detected, and completeness is reached at ~2e14 M_sun/h.

14 pages, 13 figures, accepted on A&A

References in corpus (2)

• GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey -- I. Anatomy of galaxy clusters in the background of NGC 300
• GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey -- II. Confirmation of EIS cluster candidates by weak gravitational lensing

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Strong lensing optical depths in a LCDM universe II: the influence of the stellar mass in galaxies
• Realistic simulations of gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters: extracting arc parameters from mock DUNE images
• The Complex Structure of the Cl 1604 Supercluster at z~0.9
• The abundance of lensing protoclusters