Studying Galaxy Troughs and Ridges Using Weak Gravitational Lensing with the Kilo-Degree Survey
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Faculty Scholarship 12-21-2018 Studying galaxy troughs and ridges using weak gravitational lensing with the Kilo-Degree Survey Margot M. Brouwer Leiden Observatory Research Institute Vasiliy Demchenko University of Edinburgh, Institute for Astronomy Joachim Harnois-Déraps University of Edinburgh, Institute for Astronomy Maciej Bilicki Leiden Observatory Research Institute Catherine Heymans University of Edinburgh, Institute for Astronomy See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons ThinkIR Citation Brouwer, Margot M.; Demchenko, Vasiliy; Harnois-Déraps, Joachim; Bilicki, Maciej; Heymans, Catherine; Hoekstra, Henk; Kuijken, Konrad; Alpaslan, Mehmet; Brough, Sarah; Cai, Yan Chuan; Costa-Duarte, Marcus V.; Dvornik, Andrej; Erben, Thomas; Hildebrandt, Hendrik; Holwerda, Benne W.; Schneider, Peter; Sifón, Cristóbal; and van Uitert, Edo, "Studying galaxy troughs and ridges using weak gravitational lensing with the Kilo-Degree Survey" (2018). Faculty Scholarship. 492. https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/492 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Margot M. Brouwer, Vasiliy Demchenko, Joachim Harnois-Déraps, Maciej Bilicki, Catherine Heymans, Henk Hoekstra, Konrad Kuijken, Mehmet Alpaslan, Sarah Brough, Yan Chuan Cai, Marcus V. Costa-Duarte, Andrej Dvornik, Thomas Erben, Hendrik Hildebrandt, Benne W. Holwerda, Peter Schneider, Cristóbal Sifón, and Edo van Uitert This article is available at ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/ faculty/492 MNRAS 000,1{23 (2018) Preprint 19 January 2021 Compiled using MNRAS LATEX style file v3.0 Studying galaxy troughs and ridges using Weak Gravitational Lensing with the Kilo-Degree Survey Margot M. Brouwer1;2?, Vasiliy Demchenko3, Joachim Harnois-D´eraps3, Maciej Bilicki1;4, Catherine Heymans3, Henk Hoekstra1, Konrad Kuijken1, Mehmet Alpaslan5, Sarah Brough6, Yan-Chuan Cai3, Marcus V. Costa-Duarte7, Andrej Dvornik1, Thomas Erben8, Hendrik Hildebrandt8, Benne W. Holwerda9, Peter Schneider8, Crist´obal Sif´on10, Edo van Uitert11 1Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 2, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands. 2Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, NL-9700 AV Groningen, the Netherlands. 3SUPA, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, EH9 3HJ, UK. 4National Centre for Nuclear Research, Astrophysics Division, P.O. Box 447, PL-90-950 Lodz, Poland. 5Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York University, 726 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, USA. 6School of Physics, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia. 7Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of S~aoPaulo, 05508-090 S~ao Paulo, Brazil. 8Argelander-Institut fur¨ Astronomie, Auf dem Hugel¨ 71, D-53121 Bonn, Germany. 9Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA. 10Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. 11Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Accepted 2018 September 16. Received 2018 September 13; in original form 2018 May 1 ABSTRACT We study projected underdensities in the cosmic galaxy density field known as `troughs', and their overdense counterparts, which we call `ridges'. We identify these re- gions using a bright sample of foreground galaxies from the photometric Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), specifically selected to mimic the spectroscopic Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey (GAMA). Using background galaxies from KiDS, we measure the weak gravitational lensing profiles of the troughs/ridges. We quantify the amplitude of their lensing strength A as a function of galaxy density percentile rank P and galaxy overdensity δ, and find that the skewness in the galaxy density distribution is reflected in the total mass distribution measured by weak lensing. We interpret our results using the mock galaxy catalogue from the Marenostrum Institut de Ci`encies de l'Espai (MICE) simulation, and find a good agreement with our observations. Us- ing signal-to-noise weights derived from the Scinet LIghtCone Simulations (SLICS) mock catalogue we optimally stack the lensing signal of KiDS troughs with an angular arXiv:1805.00562v2 [astro-ph.CO] 30 Jan 2019 radius θA = 5; 10; 15; 20 arcmin, resulting in 16:8; 14:9; 10:13; 7:55 σ detections. Finally, we selectf troughsg using a volume-limitedf sample of galaxies,g split into two redshift bins between 0:1 < z < 0:3. For troughs/ridges with transverse comoving −1 radius RA = 1:9 h70 Mpc, we find no significant difference in the comoving Excess Surface Density as a function of P and δ between the low- and high-redshift sample. Using the MICE and SLICS mocks we predict that trough and ridge evolution could be detected with gravitational lensing using deeper and wider lensing surveys, such as those from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and Euclid. Key words: gravitational lensing: weak { methods: statistical { cosmology: dark matter, large-scale structure of the Universe { Surveys { Galaxies. c 2018 The Authors ? E-mail:[email protected] 2 M. M. Brouwer et al. gravitational shear around 901 voids detected in SDSS. The depth of their void lensing signal corresponded to the pre- diction from the analytical model by Krause et al.(2013), who concluded that lensing measurements of medium-sized 1 INTRODUCTION voids with sufficient precision (i.e. with a signal-to-noise ra- Over the past two decades large-scale galaxy redshift sur- tio S=N & 10) will only be possible with Stage IV surveys veys, such as the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS, such as the Euclid mission (Laureijs et al. 2011) and the Colless et al. 2001) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST, Dark Energy Sci- Abazajian et al. 2009), have provided an ever more accurate ence Collaboration 2012). One of the reasons this signal is so picture of the distribution of galaxies in the Universe. They difficult to measure is that lensing measures the average den- show that galaxies form an intricate `cosmic web' of clusters sity contrast along the entire line-of-sight (LOS). If a dense and filaments, separated by largely empty voids. This distri- cluster is located in the same LOS as the void, it can con- bution is also observed in large-scale hydrodynamical simu- taminate the lensing signal. Another challenge of studying lations based on the concordance ΛCDM cosmology, such as voids using stacked gravitational lensing signals is that this the Illustris (Vogelsberger et al. 2014) and EAGLE (Schaye method only measures the average shear as a function of the et al. 2015) projects. These simulations show the gravita- transverse separation from the void centre (Hamaus et al. tional collapse of dark matter (DM) into a web-like struc- 2014; Nadathur et al. 2015). This means that the detailed ture, establishing the `skeleton' for baryonic matter, which void shape information will not be captured, and that stack- falls into the DM's potential well. Within this framework, ing voids that are not radially symmetric can even diminish the growth factor of voids with redshift can be used to con- the lensing signal. Moreover, the centre and the radius of strain the energy density and equation of state parameter these non-spherical voids are difficult to define, and choos- of dark energy (DE) (Lavaux & Wandelt 2010; Demchenko ing the wrong value reduces the lensing signal even further et al. 2016), which causes the Universe's accelerated expan- (for an analysis of these effects, see e.g. Cautun et al. 2016). sion. The low density in voids also makes them clean probes To circumvent the aforementioned problems, Gruen of global cosmological parameters, as their interior is less et al.(2016) (hereafter G16) devised a definition for pro- affected by baryonic physics than denser regions (Bos et al. jected voids named `troughs'. These are very simply de- 2012). In addition to testing the standard model of cosmol- fined as the most underdense circular regions on the sky, ogy, voids can also be used to detect signatures of modified in terms of galaxy number density. Being circular in shape, gravity models, which aim to provide an alternative expla- troughs evade the problem of the centre definition, and are nation for the accelerating expansion of the Universe (for perfectly suited for measuring their stacked shear as a func- reviews, see Jain & Khoury 2010; Clifton et al. 2012). Be- tion of transverse separation. Because they are defined as cause these theories should converge to standard general rel- projected circular regions of low galaxy density, they have 1 ativity inside the Solar System, most implement a screening the 3D shapes of long conical frusta protruding into the mechanism that suppresses their `5th force' in high-density sky. Since this definition only includes regions of low aver- regions. Simulations based on modified gravity show that age density over the entire LOS, it automatically