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arXiv · 2203.01460

Propagating spatially-varying multiplicative shear bias to cosmological parameter estimation for stage-IV weak-lensing surveys

Casey Cragg·Christopher A. J. Duncan·Lance Miller·David Alonso
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Abstract

We consider the bias introduced by a spatially-varying multiplicative shear bias (m-bias) on tomographic cosmic shear angular power spectra. To compute the bias in the power spectra, we estimate the mode-coupling matrix associated with an m-bias map using a computationally-efficient pseudo-Cl method. This allows us to consider the effect of the m-bias to high l. We then conduct a Fisher matrix analysis to forecast resulting biases in cosmological parameters. For a Euclid-like survey with a spatially-varying m-bias, with zero mean and rms of 0.01, we find that parameter biases reach a maximum of ~10% of the expected statistical error, if multipoles up to l_max = 5000 are included. We conclude that the effect of the spatially-varying m-bias may be a sub-dominant but potentially non-negligible contribution to the error budget in forthcoming weak lensing surveys. We also investigate the dependence of parameter biases on the amplitude and angular scale of spatial variations of the m-bias field, and conclude that requirements should be placed on the rms of spatial variations of the m-bias, in addition to any requirement on the mean value. We find that, for a Euclid-like survey, biases generally exceed ~30% of the statistical error for m-bias rms 0.02 - 0.03 and can exceed the statistical error for rms ~0.04 - 0.05. This allows requirements to be set on the permissible amplitude of spatial variations of the m-bias that will arise due to systematics in forthcoming weak lensing measurements.

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Casey Cragg, Christopher A. J. Duncan, Lance Miller, David Alonso. 2022-03-02. Propagating spatially-varying multiplicative shear bias to cosmological parameter estimation for stage-IV weak-lensing surveys. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras%2Fstac3324

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