CaltechAUTHORS
Published March 1, 2013 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

CFHTLenS: testing the laws of gravity with tomographic weak lensing and redshift-space distortions

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of Edinburgh
  • 2. ROR icon University of Queensland
  • 3. ROR icon Swinburne University of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon CEA Saclay
  • 5. ROR icon Excellence Cluster Universe
  • 6. ROR icon Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • 7. ROR icon University of British Columbia
  • 8. ROR icon University of Bonn
  • 9. ROR icon Leiden University
  • 10. ROR icon University of Victoria
  • 11. ROR icon Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
  • 12. ROR icon Sorbonne University
  • 13. ROR icon University of Oxford
  • 14. ROR icon Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica
  • 15. ROR icon Shanghai Normal University
  • 16. ROR icon Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
  • 17. ROR icon University of Toronto
  • 18. ROR icon University of Waterloo
  • 19. ROR icon Perimeter Institute
  • 20. ROR icon University College London
  • 21. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 22. ROR icon Stanford University

Abstract

Dark energy may be the first sign of new fundamental physics in the Universe, taking either a physical form or revealing a correction to Einsteinian gravity. Weak gravitational lensing and galaxy peculiar velocities provide complementary probes of general relativity, and in combination allow us to test modified theories of gravity in a unique way. We perform such an analysis by combining measurements of cosmic shear tomography from the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) with the growth of structure from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey and the Six-degree-Field Galaxy Survey, producing the strongest existing joint constraints on the metric potentials that describe general theories of gravity. For scale-independent modifications to the metric potentials which evolve linearly with the effective dark energy density, we find present-day cosmological deviations in the Newtonian potential and curvature potential from the prediction of general relativity to be ΔΨ/Ψ = 0.05 ± 0.25 and ΔΦ/Φ = −0.05 ± 0.3, respectively (68 per cent confidence limits).

Additional Information

© 2012 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. First published online: December 22, 2012. Accepted 2012 November 26. Received 2012 November 26; in original form 2012 September 4. We would like to thank Gong-Bo Zhao, Pedro Ferreira, John Peacock, Benjamin Joachimi and the referee Joe Zuntz for helpful discussions. This work is based on observations obtained with MegaPrime/MegaCam, a joint project of CFHT and CEA/DAPNIA, at the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) which is operated by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) of France and the University of Hawaii. This research used the facilities of the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre operated by the National Research Council of Canada with the support of the Canadian Space Agency. We thank the CFHT staff for successfully conducting the CFHTLS observations and in particular Jean-Charles Cuillandre and Eugene Magnier for the continuous improvement of the instrument calibration and the ELIXIR detrended data that we used. We also thank TERAPIX for the quality assessment and validation of individual exposures during the CFHTLS data acquisition period, and Emmanuel Bertin for developing some of the software used in this study. CFHTLenS data processing was made possible thanks to significant computing support from the NSERC Research Tools and Instruments grant program, and to HPC specialist Ovidiu Toader. The N-body simulations used in this analysis were performed on the TCS supercomputer at the SciNet HPC Consortium. SciNet is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation under the auspices of Compute Canada, the Government of Ontario, Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence and the University of Toronto. The early stages of the CFHTLenS project were made possible thanks to the support of the European Commissions Marie Curie Research Training Network DUEL (MRTN-CT-2006-036133) which directly supported members of the CFHTLenS team (LF, H. Hildebrandt, BR, MV) between 2007 and 2011 in addition to providing travel support and expenses for team meetings. FS, CH, H. Hoekstra and BR acknowledge support from the European Research Council under the EC FP7 grant numbers 240185 (FS, CH), 279396 (H. Hildebrandt) and 240672 (BR). CB acknowledges the support of the through the award of a Future Fellowship. LVW acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the (CIfAR, Cosmology and Gravity program). TE is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through project ER 327/3-1 and the TR 33 'The Dark Universe'. H. Hildebrandt is supported by the Marie Curie IOF 252760 and by a CITA National Fellowship. H. Hoekstra also acknowledges support from Marie Curie IRG grant 230924 and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research grant number 639.042.814. TDK acknowledges support from a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. YM acknowledges support from CNRS/INSU (Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers) and the . LF acknowledges support from NSFC grants and 10878003, Innovation Program 12ZZ134 and Chen Guang project 10CG46 of SMEC and STCSM grant 11290706600. MJH acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). TS acknowledges support from NSF through grant AST-0444059-001, SAO through grant GO0-11147A and NWO. MV acknowledges support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and from the Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. Author contributions: all authors contributed to the development and writing of this paper. The authorship list reflects the lead authors of this paper (FS, CH, DP, CB, MK) followed by two alphabetical groups. The first alphabetical group includes key contributors to the science analysis and interpretation in this paper, the founding core team and those whose long-term significant effort produced the final CFHTLenS data product. The second group covers members of the CFHTLenS team who made a significant contribution to either the project, this paper or both. CH and LVW co-led the CFHTLenS collaboration.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
39080
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20130625-105923156

Funding

Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
Canada Foundation for Innovation
Government of Ontario
Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence
University of Toronto
Marie Curie Fellowship
MRTN-CT-2006-036133
European Research Council (ERC)
240185
European Research Council (ERC)
279396
European Research Council (ERC)
240672
Australian Research Council
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
ER 327/3-1
Transregional Collaborative Research Centre
TR 33
Marie Curie Fellowship
252760
CITA National Fellowship
Marie Curie Fellowship
230924
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
639.042.814
Royal Society
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Programme National Galaxies et Cosmologie (PNCG)
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11103012
National Natural Science Foundation of China
10878003
SMEC Innovation Programme
12ZZ134
SMEC Chen Guang project
10CG46
Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality
11290706600
NSF
AST-0444059-001
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
GO0-11147A
Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU)
Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

Dates

Created
2013-06-25
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-09
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