Emulating redshift mixing due to blending in weak gravitational lensing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Zekang, Gruen, Daniel, Tortorelli, Luca, Li, Shun-Sheng, McCullough, Jamie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhang, Zekang
Gruen, Daniel
Tortorelli, Luca
Li, Shun-Sheng
McCullough, Jamie
author_facet Zhang, Zekang
Gruen, Daniel
Tortorelli, Luca
Li, Shun-Sheng
McCullough, Jamie
contents Galaxies whose images overlap in the focal plane of a telescope, commonly referred to as blends, are often located at different redshifts. Blending introduces a challenge to weak-lensing cosmology probes since such blends are subject to shear signals from multiple redshifts. This effect can be described by joining shear bias and redshift characterisation in the effective redshift distribution, $n_γ(z)$, which includes the response of apparent shapes of detected objects to shear of galaxies at redshift, $z$. In this work, we propose a novel method to correct $n_γ(z)$ for redshift-mixed blending by emulating the shear response to neighbouring galaxies. We designed a `half-sky-shearing' simulation with Subaru Hyper Suprime Cam (HSC) wide-like specifications, which allowed us to extract the response of a detected object's measured ellipticity to the shearing of neighbouring galaxies among numerous galaxy pairs. We demonstrate the feasibility of accurately emulating these pairwise responses and validate the robustness of our approach under varying observing conditions and galaxy population uncertainties. We find that the effective redshift of sources at the high-redshift tail of the distribution is about 0.05 lower than expected when the effect is not modelled. Given adequately processed image simulations, our correction method can be readily incorporated into future cosmological analyses to mitigate this source of systematic error.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_19130
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Emulating redshift mixing due to blending in weak gravitational lensing
Zhang, Zekang
Gruen, Daniel
Tortorelli, Luca
Li, Shun-Sheng
McCullough, Jamie
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Galaxies whose images overlap in the focal plane of a telescope, commonly referred to as blends, are often located at different redshifts. Blending introduces a challenge to weak-lensing cosmology probes since such blends are subject to shear signals from multiple redshifts. This effect can be described by joining shear bias and redshift characterisation in the effective redshift distribution, $n_γ(z)$, which includes the response of apparent shapes of detected objects to shear of galaxies at redshift, $z$. In this work, we propose a novel method to correct $n_γ(z)$ for redshift-mixed blending by emulating the shear response to neighbouring galaxies. We designed a `half-sky-shearing' simulation with Subaru Hyper Suprime Cam (HSC) wide-like specifications, which allowed us to extract the response of a detected object's measured ellipticity to the shearing of neighbouring galaxies among numerous galaxy pairs. We demonstrate the feasibility of accurately emulating these pairwise responses and validate the robustness of our approach under varying observing conditions and galaxy population uncertainties. We find that the effective redshift of sources at the high-redshift tail of the distribution is about 0.05 lower than expected when the effect is not modelled. Given adequately processed image simulations, our correction method can be readily incorporated into future cosmological analyses to mitigate this source of systematic error.
title Emulating redshift mixing due to blending in weak gravitational lensing
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19130