Weak Gravitational Lensing Effect Research Articles

Weak gravitational lensing around dyonic ModMax black hole in plasma

In this study, we examine the effects of weak gravitational lensing and determine the shadow radius around black holes within the Dyonic ModMax (DM) spacetime, also accounting for models with nonuniform plasma distributions. By analyzing various gravitational lens models, we compare corrections to vacuum lensing due to gravitational effects within plasma and plasma inhomogeneity, finding that these effects could be observed in hot gas within galaxy clusters. Starting with the orbits of photons around a black hole in DM, we investigate the shadow and weak gravitational lensing phenomena. Utilizing observational data from the Event Horizon Telescope for M87* and SgrA*, we constrain parameters within DM gravity. To connect our findings to observations, we examine the magnification and positioning of lensed images, along with the weak deflection angle and magnification for sources near different galaxies.

Exploring Weak Gravitational Lensing Effects by a Regular Black Hole

Gravitational lensing is one of the physical consequences of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which has been observationally confirmed. This work aims to study the weak gravitational lensing scenario where the lens is a spherically symmetric, charged-nonsingular black hole that asymptotically behaves as the Reissner-Nordström (RN). The difference exists in the higher-order expansion. Therefore, the metric function of the regular charged black hole is expanded up to the fourth order, and the deflection angle is calculated. The thin lens equation is used, leading to five images: two imaginary and three real images. The exact positions of the images and magnification properties are calculated by providing the physical parameters such as mass, charge, and distances. Our calculation shows that the third image position shifted away from the optical axis. The formalism is applied to the case of a supermassive black hole located at the center of our galaxy with the assumption that it has an electric charge.

Traversable wormholes with weak gravitational lensing effect in [formula omitted] gravity

In this article, we have introduced completely new asymptotically flat Morris-Thorne traversable wormhole geometries supported by anisotropic matter in the framework of f(R,T)=R+αR2+λT gravity whereas the isotropic matter content does not support the wormhole structure. The reported shape functions are nicely fitted in the construction of wormhole geometries by satisfying all the essential conditions. The wormhole solutions are regular at the throat radius and in the equilibrium position under the action of hydrostatic and anisotropic forces only. In addition, we have studied the weak gravitational lensing effect in the reported wormhole optical geometries using the Gauss–Bonnet theorem (GBT).

Weak gravitational lensing and shadow of a GUP-modified Schwarzschild black hole in the presence of plasma

In this work, we have studied weak gravitational lensing effect around black hole and determine shadow radius in GUP-corrected-Schwarzschild spacetime (S-GUP) in presence of plasma environment. We started with orbits of photons around black hole in S-GUP. In addition, we have studied shadow and gravitational weak lensing around such black hole. By using observational data of EHT project for the M87* and Sgr A*, we have got constrains parameter ϵ in S-GUP gravity. Further to make a connection with observations, we investigate magnification and position of images formed as a result of lensing, and finally weak deflection angle and magnification for sources near M87* and Sgr A*.

Testing new massive conformal gravity with the light deflection by black hole

We study the weak gravitational lensing effect of Non-Bocharova-Bronnikov-Melnikov-Bekenstein (BBMB) black hole in new massive conformal gravity. We analyze the deflection angle of light caused by new massive conformal gravity by using the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. As a consequence, we obtain the Gaussian optical curvature and calculate the deflection angle of the new massive conformal gravity for spherically balanced space-time with the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. The resultant deflection angle of light in the weak field limits showing that the bending of light is a global and topological phenomenon. Furthermore, we identify the deflection angle of light in the framework of the plasma medium, we also demonstrate the effect of a plasma medium on the deflection of light by non BBMB. In addition, the behavior of the deflection angle by new massive conformal gravity is explicitly shown in the influence of plasma medium and for the non plasma medium.

Shadow revisiting and weak gravitational lensing with Chern-Simons modification

Dynamical Chern-Simons (dCS) gravity has been attracting plenty of attentions due to the fact that it is a parity-violating modified theory of gravity that corresponds to a well-posed effective field theory in weak coupling approximation. In particular, a rotating black hole in dCS gravity is in contrast to the general relativistic counterparts. In this paper, we revisit the shadow of analytical rotating black hole spacetime in dCS modified gravity, based on which we study the shadow observables, discuss the constraint on the model parameters from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations, and analyze the real part of quasi-normal modes (QNMs) in the eikonal limit. In addition, we explore the deflection angle in weak gravitational field limit with the use of Gauss-Bonnet theorem. We find that the shadow related physics and the weak gravitational lensing effect are significantly influenced by the CS coupling, which could provide theoretical predictions for a future test of the dCS theory with EHT observations.

AMICO galaxy clusters in KiDS-DR3

Context. The large-scale mass distribution around dark matter haloes hosting galaxy clusters provides sensitive cosmological information. Aims. In this work we make use of a large photometric galaxy cluster sample, constructed from the public Third Data Release of the Kilo-Degree Survey, and the corresponding shear signal, to assess cluster masses and test the concordance Λ-cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model. In particular, we study the weak gravitational lensing effects on scales beyond the cluster virial radius, where the signal is dominated by correlated and uncorrelated matter density distributions along the line of sight. The analysed catalogue consists of 6962 galaxy clusters, in the redshift range 0.1 ≤ z ≤ 0.6 and with signal-to-noise ratios higher than 3.5. Methods. We perform a full Bayesian analysis to model the stacked shear profiles of these clusters. The adopted likelihood function considers both the small-scale one-halo term, used primarily to constrain the cluster structural properties, and the two-halo term, that can be used to constrain cosmological parameters. Results. We find that the adopted modelling is successful in assessing both the cluster masses and the total matter density parameter, ΩM, when fitting shear profiles up to the largest available scales of 35 Mpc h−1. Moreover, our results provide a strong observational evidence of the two-halo signal in the stacked gravitational lensing of galaxy clusters, further demonstrating the reliability of this probe for cosmological studies. The main result of this work is a robust constraint on ΩM, assuming a flat ΛCDM cosmology. We get ΩM = 0.29 ± 0.02, estimated from the full posterior probability distribution, consistent with the estimates from cosmic microwave background experiments.

Local patch analysis for testing statistical isotropy of the Planck convergence map

The small but measurable effect of weak gravitational lensing on the cosmic microwave background radiation provide information about the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe.We use the all sky distribution of matter, as represented by the convergence map that is inferred from CMB lensing measurement by Planck survey, to test the fundamental assumption of Statistical Isotropy (SI) of the universe. For the analysis we use the α statistic that is devised from the contour Minkowski tensor, a tensorial generalization of the scalar Minkowski functional, the contour length. In essence, the α statistic captures the ellipticity of iso-field contours at any chosen threshold value of a smooth random field and provides a measure of anisotropy.The SI of the observed convergence map is tested against the suite of realistic simulations of the convergence map provided by the Planck collaboration.We first carry out a global analysis using the full sky data after applying the galactic and point sources mask. We find that the observed data is consistent with SI.Further we carry out a local search for departure from SI in small patches of the sky using α. This analysis reveals several sky patches which exhibit deviations from simulations with statistical significance higher than 95% confidence level (CL). Our analysis indicates that the source of the anomalous behaviour of most of the outlier patches is inaccurate estimation of noise. We identify two outlier patches which exhibit anomalous behaviour originating from departure from SI at higher than 95% CL. Most of the anomalous patches are found to be located roughly along the ecliptic plane or in proximity to the ecliptic poles.

Searching for eV-mass axionlike particles with cross correlations between line intensity and weak lensing maps

We study cross correlations between line intensity and weak lensing maps to search for axion-like particles (ALPs). Radiative decay of eV-mass ALPs can contribute to cosmic background emissions at optical and infrared wavelengths. Line intensity mapping is a unique means of measuring the background emission at a given photon frequency. If ALPs constitute the abundance of cosmic dark matter, line intensity maps can correlate with large-scale structures probed by weak gravitational lensing effects in galaxy imaging surveys. We develop a theoretical framework to predict the cross correlation. We then explore potentiality of probing ALPs with the cross correlation in upcoming galaxy-imaging and spectral surveys. Assuming SPHEREx and the Vera Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), we find that the cross correlation by the ALP decay can be greater than the astrophysical-line counterparts at wavelength of $\sim3000\, {\rm nm}$ for ALPs with a particle mass of $m_a\sim1\, \mathrm{eV}$ and a particle-to-two-photons coupling of $g_{a\gamma\gamma}\sim1\times10^{-11}\, \mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$. We also predict that a null detection of the cross correlation can place a $2\sigma$-level upper bound of $g_{a\gamma\gamma} \lower.5ex\hbox{$\; \buildrel < \over \sim \;$} 10^{-11}\, \mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ for eV-mass ALPs, improving the current constraint by a factor of $\sim10$. We then make a forecast of expected constraints on ALP parameters in SPHEREx and LSST by Fisher analysis, providing a guideline of searching for the ALP decay with the large-scale structure data.

Cosmology with the submillimetre galaxies magnification bias: Proof of concept

Context. As recently demonstrated, high-z submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) are the perfect background sample for tracing the mass density profiles of galaxies and clusters (baryonic and dark matter) and their time-evolution through gravitational lensing. Their magnification bias, a weak gravitational lensing effect, is a powerful tool for constraining the free parameters of a halo occupation distribution (HOD) model and potentially also some of the main cosmological parameters. Aims. The aim of this work is to test the capability of the magnification bias produced on high-z SMGs as a cosmological probe. We exploit cross-correlation data to constrain not only astrophysical parameters (Mmin, M1, and α), but also some of the cosmological ones (Ωm, σ8, and H0) for this proof of concept. Methods. The measured cross-correlation function between a foreground sample of GAMA galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in the range 0.2 &lt; z &lt; 0.8 and a background sample of H-ATLAS galaxies with photometric redshifts &gt; 1.2 is modelled using the traditional halo model description that depends on HOD and cosmological parameters. These parameters are then estimated by performing a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis using different sets of priors to test the robustness of the results and to study the performance of this novel observable with the current set of data. Results. With our current results, Ωm and H0 cannot be well constrained. However, we can set a lower limit of &gt; 0.24 at 95% confidence level (CL) on Ωm and we see a slight trend towards H0 &gt; 70 values. For our constraints on σ8 we obtain only a tentative peak around 0.75, but an interesting upper limit of σ8 ≲ 1 at 95% CL. We also study the possibility to derive better constraints by imposing more restrictive priors on the astrophysical parameters.

Weak lensing of Type Ia Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey

ABSTRACT We consider the effects of weak gravitational lensing on observations of 196 spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) from years 1 to 3 of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We simultaneously measure both the angular correlation function and the non-Gaussian skewness caused by weak lensing. This approach has the advantage of being insensitive to the intrinsic dispersion of SNe Ia magnitudes. We model the amplitude of both effects as a function of σ8, and find σ8 =1.2$^{+0.9}_{-0.8}$. We also apply our method to a subsample of 488 SNe from the Joint Light-curve Analysis (JLA; chosen to match the redshift range we use for this work), and find σ8 =0.8$^{+1.1}_{-0.7}$. The comparable uncertainty in σ8 between DES–SN and the larger number of SNe from JLA highlights the benefits of homogeneity of the DES–SN sample, and improvements in the calibration and data analysis.

Morphology of CMB fields—effect of weak gravitational lensing

We study the morphology of the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization fields using the shape and alignment parameters, β and α, that are constructed from the contour Minkowski tensor. The primary goal of our paper is to understand the effect of weak gravitational lensing on the morphology of the CMB fields. In order to isolate different physical effects that can be potentially confused with the effect of lensing, we first study the effect of varying the cosmology on α and β, and show that they are relatively insensitive to variation of cosmological parameters. Next we analyze the signatures of hemispherical anisotropy, and show that information of such anisotropy in α gets washed out at small angular scales and become pronounced only at large angular scales. For β we find characteristic distortions which vary with the field threshold. We then study the effect of weak gravitational lensing using simulations of lensed temperature and E and B modes. We quantify the distortion induced in the fields across different angular scales. We find that lensing makes structures of all fields increasingly more anisotropic as we probe down to smaller scales. We find distinct behaviour of morphological distortions as a function of threshold for the different fields. The effect is small for temperature and E mode, while it is significantly large for B mode. Further, we find that lensing does not induce statistical anisotropy, as expected from the isotropic distribution of large scale structure of matter. We expect that the results obtained in this work will provide insights on the reconstruction of the lensing potential.

Influence of the local Universe on weak gravitational lensing surveys

Observations of the large-scale structure (LSS) implicitly assume an ideal FLRW observer with the ambient structure having no influence on the observer. However, due to correlations in the LSS, cosmological observables are dependent on the position of an observer. We investigate this influence in full generality for a weakly non-Gaussian random field, for which we derive expressions for angular spectra of large-scale structure observables conditional on a property of the large-scale structure that is typical for the observer's location. As an application, we then apply to the formalism to angular spectra of the weak gravitational lensing effect and provide numerical estimates for the resulting change on the spectra using linear structure formation. For angular weak lensing spectra we find the effect to be of order of a few percent, for instance we estimate for an overdensity of $\delta =0.5$ and multipoles up to $\ell=100$ the change in the weak lensing spectra to be approximately 4 percent. We show that without accounting for correlation between the density at observer's location and the weak gravitational lensing spectra, the values of the parameters $\Omega_m$ and $\sigma_8$ are underestimated by a few percent. Thus, this effect will be important when analysing data from future surveys such as Euclid, which aim at the percent-level precision. The effect is difficult to capture in simulations, as estimates of the number of numerical simulations necessary to quantify the effect are high.

Redshift inference from the combination of galaxy colours and clustering in a hierarchical Bayesian model

Powerful current and future cosmological constraints using high precision measurements of the large-scale structure of galaxies and its weak gravitational lensing effects rely on accurate characterization of the redshift distributions of the galaxy samples using only broadband imaging. We present a framework for constraining both the redshift probability distributions of galaxy populations and the redshifts of their individual members. We use a hierarchical Bayesian model (HBM) which provides full posterior distributions on those redshift probability distributions, and, for the first time, we show how to combine survey photometry of single galaxies and the information contained in the galaxy clustering against a well-characterized tracer population in a robust way. One critical approximation turns the HBM into a system amenable to efficient Gibbs sampling. We show that in the absence of photometric information, this method reduces to commonly used clustering redshift estimators. Using a simple model system, we show how the incorporation of clustering information with photo-$z$'s tightens redshift posteriors, and can overcome biases or gaps in the coverage of a spectroscopic prior. The method enables the full propagation of redshift uncertainties into cosmological analyses, and uses all the information at hand to reduce those uncertainties and associated potential biases.

Impact of radio sources and cosmic infrared background on thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich – gravitational lensing cross-correlation

Cross correlation with thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect in cosmic microwave background observation and weak gravitational lensing effect in galaxy imaging survey opens a new window on constraining matter contents in the Universe at redshift less than 1. In this paper, we study the impact of radio sources and cosmic infrared background (CIB) on observed tSZ-lensing correlation. Assuming the best-fit model of CIB by the Planck satellite, we estimate that the residual correlation of CIB with large-scale structures will be of an order of $2\%$ of expected tSZ-lensing correlation from intracluster medium in current lensing surveys. On the other hand, despite large model uncertainties, we find that correlation of lensing and radio sources can induce a negative correction for the observed tSZ-lensing correlation with a $\sim10-30\%$ level. This is originated from positive cross correlation with radio sources and lensing at $\sim100\, {\rm GHz}$ frequency, whereas tSZ-lensing correlation should show a negative value in temperature fluctuations at that frequency. We also show that the negative correction by radio-lensing correlation can solve the tension between recent measurements of tSZ-lensing correlation and an expected signal from "universal" gas pressure profile of nearby galaxy clusters, when the radio sources with flat-spectral index are assumed to populate massive cluster-sized dark matte halos. Our results indicate that minor source population in radio bands can play an important role in determining observed tSZ-lensing correlation at $<10$ arcmin.

3D cosmic shear: Numerical challenges, 3D lensing random fields generation, and Minkowski functionals for cosmological inference

Cosmic shear - the weak gravitational lensing effect generated by fluctuations of the gravitational tidal fields of the large-scale structure - is one of the most promising tools for current and future cosmological analyses. The spherical-Bessel decomposition of the cosmic shear field ("3D cosmic shear") is one way to maximise the amount of redshift information in a lensing analysis and therefore provides a powerful tool to investigate in particular the growth of cosmic structure that is crucial for dark energy studies. However, the computation of simulated 3D cosmic shear covariance matrices presents numerical difficulties, due to the required integrations over highly oscillatory functions. We present and compare two numerical methods and relative implementations to perform these integrations. We then show how to generate 3D Gaussian random fields on the sky in spherical coordinates, starting from the 3D cosmic shear covariances. To validate our field-generation procedure, we calculate the Minkowski functionals associated with our random fields, compare them with the known expectation values for the Gaussian case and demonstrate parameter inference from Minkowski functionals from a cosmic shear survey. This is a first step towards producing fully 3D Minkowski functionals for a lognormal field in 3D to extract Gaussian and non-Gaussian information from the cosmic shear field, as well as towards the use of Minkowski functionals as a probe of cosmology beyond the commonly used two-point statistics.

Conical Morris-Thorne wormholes with a global monopole charge

In this paper we have established an asymptotically conical Morris-Thorne wormhole solution supported by anisotropic matter fluid and a global monopole charge in the framework of a $1+3$ dimensional gravity minimally coupled to a triplet of scalar fields $\phi^a$, resulting from the breaking of a global $O(3)$ symmetry. For the anisotropic matter fluid we have considered the equation of state (EoS) given by $\mathcal{P}_r=\omega \rho$, with a consequence $\omega<-1$, implying a so-called phantom energy at the throat of the wormhole which violates the energy conditions. In addition, we study the weak gravitational lensing effect using the Gauss-Bonnet theorem (GBT) applied to the wormhole optical geometry. We show that the total deflection angle consists of a term given by $4\pi^2 \eta^2 $, which is independent from the impact parameter $b$, and an additional term which depends on the radius of the wormhole throat $b_0$ as well as the dimensionless constant $\zeta$.

Spectroscopic follow-up of double quasar candidates

We report the results of an optical spectroscopic follow-up of four double quasar candidates in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database. SDSS J1617+3827 is most likely a lensed quasar at z = 2.079, consisting of two images with r ~ 19-21 and separated by ~ 2 arcsec. We identify an extended source northeast of the brightest image as an early-type lensing galaxy at z = 0.602, and detect a candidate for the main deflector in the vicinity of the faintest image. SDSS J2153+2732 consists of two distinct but physically associated quasars at z ~ 2.24 (r ~ 19-20, separation of 3.6 arcsec). Although this system might be a binary quasar, there is evidence of a collision or merger within a galaxy cluster at an early stage. The other two candidates are projected pairs of active galactic nuclei: SDSS J1642+3200 (separation of ~ 3 arcsec) comprises a distant quasar (r ~ 18) at z = 2.263 and the active nucleus (r > 20) of a galaxy at z ~ 0.3, while SDSS J0240-0208 (r ~ 18-19, separation of ~ 1 arcsec) is a pair of quasars at z = 1.687 and z = 1.059. In each of these two systems, the background quasar only suffers a weak gravitational lensing effect by the host galaxy of the foreground active nucleus, so the host galaxy mass is constrained to be less than (2.9-3) x 10^{11} solar masses inside 10 kpc.

Bayesian weak lensing tomography: Reconstructing the 3D large-scale distribution of matter with a lognormal prior

We present a Bayesian reconstruction algorithm that infers the three-dimensional large-scale matter distribution from the weak gravitational lensing effects measured in the image shapes of galaxies. The algorithm is designed to also work with non-Gaussian posterior distributions which arise, for example, from a non-Gaussian prior distribution. In this work, we use a lognormal prior and compare the reconstruction results to a Gaussian prior in a suite of increasingly realistic tests on mock data. We find that in cases of high noise levels (i.e. for low source galaxy densities and/or high shape measurement uncertainties), both normal and lognormal priors lead to reconstructions of comparable quality, but with the lognormal reconstruction being prone to mass-sheet degeneracy. In the low-noise regime and on small scales, the lognormal model produces better reconstructions than the normal model: The lognormal model 1) enforces non-negative densities, while negative densities are present when a normal prior is employed, 2) better traces the extremal values and the skewness of the true underlying distribution, and 3) yields a higher pixel-wise correlation between the reconstruction and the true density.

Future CMB tests of dark matter: Ultralight axions and massive neutrinos

Measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies provide strong evidence for the existence of dark matter and dark energy. They can also test its composition, probing the energy density and particle mass of different dark-matter and dark-energy components. CMB data have already shown that ultra-light axions (ULAs) with mass in the range $10^{-32}~{\rm eV} \to 10^{-26}~{\rm eV}$ compose a fraction $< 0.01$ of the cosmological critical density. Here, the sensitivity of a proposed CMB-Stage IV (CMB-S4) experiment (assuming a 1 arcmin beam and $< 1~\mu K{\rm-arcmin}$ noise levels over a sky fraction of 0.4) to the density of ULAs and other dark-sector components is assessed. CMB-S4 data should be $\sim 10$ times more sensitive to the ULA energy-density than Planck data alone, across a wide range of ULA masses $10^{-32}< m_{a}< 10^{-23}~{\rm eV}$, and will probe axion decay constants of $f_{a}\approx 10^{16}~{\rm GeV}$, at the grand unified scale. CMB-S4 could improve the CMB lower bound on the ULA mass from $\sim 10^{-25}~{\rm eV}$ to $10^{-23}~{\rm eV}$, nearing the mass range probed by dwarf galaxy abundances and dark-matter halo density profiles. These improvements will allow for a multi-$\sigma$ detection of percent-level departures from CDM over a wide range of masses. Much of this improvement is driven by the effects of weak gravitational lensing on the CMB, which breaks degeneracies between ULAs and neutrinos. We also find that the addition of ULA parameters does not significantly degrade the sensitivity of the CMB to neutrino masses. These results were obtained using the axionCAMB code (a modification to the CAMB Boltzmann code), presented here for public use.