This review summarizes the first decade of development of weak lensing, tying together the mathematical basis for how lensing works with qualitative descriptions of early results from the field. While some of the specific details of how various aspects of the weak-lensing signal are measured and modeled have changed in the intervening 13 years, this article is still an excellent starting point for someone wanting to the learn the basics of how weak lensing works in practice. (I, A)
A good qualitative summary of the methodology and results of weak lensing circa 2007, and is a good resource for a student wanting to learn about what weak lensing can tell us about cosmology without having to understand all of the math behind the models (I, A).
Weak lensing can be used to measure statistically the distribution of mass in structures that are not dense enough to be detected individually in mass reconstructions. This weak-lensing signal is conventionally known as "cosmic shear," and its measurement is one of the primary methods that has been proposed for accurately measuring cosmological parameters such as the matter and energy content of the universe, the curvature of the universe, and the scale of matter density fluctuations.
From 2000-2002, several competing groups produced the first measurements of cosmic shear from surveys each covering ~10 square degrees. A summary of these results can be found in this review article.
Weak lensing can be used to measure statistically the distribution of mass in structures that are not dense enough to be detected individually in mass reconstructions. This weak-lensing signal is conventionally known as "cosmic shear," and its measurement is one of the primary methods that has been proposed for accurately measuring cosmological parameters such as the matter and energy content of the universe, the curvature of the universe, and the scale of matter density fluctuations.
From 2000-2002, several competing groups produced the first measurements of cosmic shear from surveys each covering ~10 square degrees. A summary of these results can be found in this review article.
This paper describes a type of lensing that is between the strong and weak-lensing limits: only single images are formed, but lensing introduces a measurable curvature to the galaxy shape. There is some theoretical promise for this "flexion" improving the combination of strong and weak-lensing data, but current attempts to measure the effect have shown it to be difficult.
This paper describes a type of lensing that is between the strong and weak-lensing limits: only single images are formed, but lensing introduces a measurable curvature to the galaxy shape. There is some theoretical promise for this "flexion" improving the combination of strong and weak-lensing data, but current attempts to measure the effect have shown it to be difficult.
This paper compares mass measurements from weak lensing and X-ray observations for a large sample of clusters, also providing a good discussion of the differences among various methods of measuring the cluster mass just with weak-lensing data.
This review contains an extremely in-depth discussion of the basics of weak gravitational lensing, with full mathematical derivations of all of the concepts known as of 2000. This review is an excellent starting point for a graduate student wanting to learn the details of weak lensing observations and theory. This review allows us to limit the number of introductory papers in the following sections and concentrate on papers giving more recent developments in the field (A).
This paper introduces a maximum likelihood algorithm for weak lensing mass reconstruction using a particle based method instead of the more conventional grid based method (A).
This paper investigates an error that pervades mass measurements with weak lensing, namely the assumption of a spherical mass model when fitting a non-spherical system. It explores whether the departure from the expected
concentrations of certain clusters is a result of this effect. (A)
This paper investigates an error that pervades mass measurements with weak lensing, namely the assumption of a spherical mass model when fitting a non-spherical system. It gives theoretical expectations of the effect from N-body simulations and analytic tri-axial mass models. (A)
LoCuSS is a large sample of nearby galaxy clusters with good weak lensing and X-ray measurements; Zhang, et al., use these clusters to investigate the agreement between mass estimates based on X-ray and weak lensing, and provide a good discussion of potential sources of errors in both of these methods.
This paper investigates an error that pervades mass measurements with weak lensing, namely the assumption of a spherical mass model when fitting a non-spherical system. It gives theoretical expectations of the effect from N-body simulations and analytic tri-axial mass models. (A)
One of the results of the analysis of weak lensing in the COSMOS field was a three-dimensional mass map, described by Massey et al as "the scaffolding of the Universe." Many news outlets covered the COSMOS dark matter map story, but in The Independent the map was presented covering the whole of the front page. (E)
This paper describes mass measurements of a particular merging cluster system, the "Bullet Cluster," showing how gravitational lensing can be used to measure the mass of a structure that is not in dynamical equilibrium, and without assuming that "mass follows light." (In this case, it does not!) It also demonstrates how noise in the weak-lensing data can affect the centers of the inferred two-dimensional mass distributions.
This paper describes further mass measurements of a particular merging cluster system, the "Bullet Cluster," showing how gravitational lensing can be used to measure the mass of a structure that is not in dynamical equilibrium, and without assuming that "mass follows light." Strong lensing information is combined in a joint analysis, improving the accuracy of the mass peak positions.
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