Biasing from galaxy trough and peak profiles with the DES Y3 redMaGiC galaxies and the weak lensing mass map

Hang, Q; Jeffrey, N; Whiteway, L; Lahav, O; Williamson, J; Gatti, M; DeRose, J; Kovacs, A; Alarcon, A; Amon, A; Bechtol, K; Becker, M R; Bernstein, G M; Campos, A; Rosell, A Carnero; Kind, M Carrasco; Chang, C; Chen, R; Choi, A; Dodelson, S; Doux, C; Drlica-Wagner, A; Elvin-Poole, J; Everett, S; Ferté, A; Gruen, D; Gruendl, R A; Harrison, I; Jarvis, M; MacCrann, N; McCullough, J; Myles, J; Navarro-Alsina, A; Pandey, S; Prat, J; Raveri, M; Rollins, R P; Rykoff, E S; Sánchez, C; Secco, L F; Sevilla-Noarbe, I; Sheldon, E; Shin, T; Troxel, M A; Tutusaus, I; Wechsler, R H; Yanny, B; Yin, B; Aguena, M; Alves, O; Andrade-Oliveira, F; Bacon, D; Blazek, J; Bocquet, S; Brooks, D; Carretero, J; Cawthon, R; Crocce, M; da Costa, L N; da Silva Pereira, M E; Davis, T M; Desai, S; Diehl, H T; Doel, P; Flaugher, B; Frieman, J; Gutierrez, G; Hinton, S R; Hollowood, D L; Honscheid, K; Kuehn, K; Lee, S; Marshall, J L; Mena-Fernández, J; Miquel, R; Malagón, A A Plazas; Porredon, A; Roodman, A; Samuroff, S; Sanchez, E; Cid, D Sanchez; Smith, M; Suchyta, E; Swanson, M E C; To, C; Vikram, V

doi:10.1093/mnras/stag006

Published February 2026 | Version Published

Journal Article Open

Biasing from galaxy trough and peak profiles with the DES Y3 redMaGiC galaxies and the weak lensing mass map

1. University College London
2. University of Chicago
3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
4. Hungarian Academy of Sciences
5. Konkoly Observatory
6. Institute of Space Sciences
7. Princeton University
8. University of Wisconsin–Madison
9. Argonne National Laboratory
10. University of Pennsylvania
11. Carnegie Mellon University
12. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
13. Laboratório Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia - LIneA , Av. Pastor Martin Luther King Jr, 126 Del Castilho, Nova América Offices, Torre 3000/sala 817 CEP: 20765-000 ,
14. University of La Laguna
15. National Center for Supercomputing Applications
16. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
17. Duke University
18. Goddard Space Flight Center
19. Fermilab
20. French National Centre for Scientific Research
21. University of Waterloo
22. California Institute of Technology
23. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
24. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
25. Cardiff University
26. University of Cambridge
27. Stanford University
28. State University of Campinas
29. Stockholm University
30. University of Genoa
31. University of Manchester
32. Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas
33. Brookhaven National Laboratory
34. Stony Brook University
35. Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology
36. Trieste Astronomical Observatory
37. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
38. University of Zurich
39. University of Portsmouth
40. Northeastern University
41. Institute for High Energy Physics
42. William Jewell College
43. Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya
44. Universität Hamburg
45. University of Queensland
46. Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
47. University of California, Santa Cruz
48. The Ohio State University
49. Macquarie University
50. Lowell Observatory
51. Jet Propulsion Lab
52. Texas A&M University
53. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats
54. Ruhr University Bochum
55. Lancaster University
56. Oak Ridge National Laboratory

We measure the correspondence between the distribution of galaxies and matter around troughs and peaks in the projected galaxy density, by comparing redMaGiC galaxies (⁠⁠0.15 < z < 0.65) to weak lensing mass maps from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Y3 data release. We obtain stacked profiles, as a function of angle θ⁠, of the galaxy density contrast δg and the weak lensing convergence ⁠κ, in the vicinity of these identified troughs and peaks, referred to as ‘void’ and ‘cluster’ superstructures. The ratio of the profiles depend mildly on θ⁠, indicating good consistency between the profile shapes. We model the amplitude of this ratio using a function F(η,θ) that depends on cosmological parameters η⁠, scaled by the galaxy bias. We construct templates of F(η,θ) using a suite of N-body (Gower Street) simulations forward-modelled with DES Y3-like noise and systematics. We discuss and quantify the caveats of using a linear bias model to create galaxy maps from the simulation dark matter shells. We measure the galaxy bias in three lens tomographic bins (near to far): 2.32^(+0.86)_(-0.27), 2.18^(+0.86)_(-0.23), 1.86^(+0.82)_(-0.23) for voids, and 2.46^(+0.73)_(-0.27), 3.55^(+0.96)_(-0.55), 4.27^(+0.36)_(-1.14) for clusters, assuming the best-fitting Planck cosmology. Similar values with ∼0.1σ shifts are obtained assuming the mean DES Y3 cosmology. The biases from troughs and peaks are broadly consistent, although a larger bias is derived for peaks, which is also larger than those measured from the DES Y3 3 x 2-point analysis. This method shows an interesting avenue for measuring field-level bias that can be applied to future lensing surveys.

Copyright and License

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

QH and OL acknowledge STFC Consolidated Grant ST/R000476/1. OL also acknowledges visits to All Souls College and to the Physics Department, University of Oxford. NJ is supported by STFC Consolidated Grant ST/V000780/1 and ERC-selected UKRI Frontier Research Grant EP/Y03015X/1. The Gower Street simulations were generated under the DiRAC project p153 ‘Likelihood-free inference with the Dark Energy Survey’ (ACSP255/ACSC1) using DiRAC (STFC) HPC facilities. JW has been supported by the STFC UCL Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science. AK has been supported by a Lendület excellence grant by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement number 101130774, and the Hungarian Ministry of Innovation and Technology NRDI Office grant OTKA NN147550.

The authors would like to thank Christopher Davis, Elisa Legnani, and Shivam Pandey for serving as the DES internal review committee, whose helpful comments and suggestions improved the quality of this manuscript. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous referee in the MNRAS review process for constructive and insightful comments.

Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey.

The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, NSF NOIRLab, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, Texas A&M University, and the OzDES Membership Consortium.

Based in part on observations at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory at NSF NOIRLab (NOIRLab Prop. ID 2012B-0001; PI: J. Frieman), which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers AST-1138766 and AST-1536171. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MICINN under grants PID2021-123012, PID2021-128989 PID2022-141079, SEV-2016-0588, CEX2020-001058-M, and CEX2020-001007-S, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IFAE is partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) do e-Universo (CNPq grant 465376/2014-2).

This document was prepared by the DES Collaboration using the resources of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics HEP User Facility. Fermilab is managed by Fermi Forward Discovery Group, LLC, acting under Contract No. 89243024CSC000002.

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Is new version of: Discussion Paper: arXiv:2509.18967 (arXiv)

Science and Technology Facilities Council
ST/R000476/1
Science and Technology Facilities Council
ST/V000780/1
UK Research and Innovation
EP/Y03015X/1
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Lendület -
European Union
101130774
National Research, Development and Innovation Office
OTKA NN147550
National Science Foundation
AST-1138766
National Science Foundation
AST-1536171
National Council for Scientific and Technological Development
465376/2014-2
United States Department of Energy
89243024CSC000002

Submitted: 2025-09-23
Accepted: 2025-12-24
Available: 2026-01-06

Published
Available: 2026-01-31

Corrected and typeset

Caltech groups: Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) , Physics Department
Publication Status: Published

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Biasing from galaxy trough and peak profiles with the DES Y3 redMaGiC galaxies and the weak lensing mass map

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Biasing from galaxy trough and peak profiles with the DES Y3 redMaGiC galaxies and the weak lensing mass map

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