Ray-tracing through the Millennium Simulation: Born corrections and lens-lens coupling in cosmic shear and galaxy-galaxy lensing

TL;DR

This study uses ray-tracing through the Millennium Simulation to evaluate the accuracy of approximations in cosmic shear and galaxy-galaxy lensing, highlighting the importance of Born corrections, lens-lens coupling, and magnification bias for future surveys.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison between ray-tracing results and semi-analytic models, identifying key areas where current models need improvement for upcoming weak-lensing observations.

Findings

Linear approximation fits well with actual matter power spectrum.

Cosmic-shear B-modes are negligible compared to E-modes.

Magnification bias affects galaxy-galaxy-lensing shear estimates.

Abstract

(abridged) We study the accuracy of various approximations to cosmic shear and weak galaxy-galaxy lensing and investigate effects of Born corrections and lens-lens coupling. We use ray-tracing through the Millennium Simulation to calculate various cosmic-shear and galaxy-galaxy-lensing statistics. We compare the results from ray-tracing to semi-analytic predictions. We find: (i) The linear approximation provides an excellent fit to cosmic-shear power spectra as long as the actual matter power spectrum is used as input. Common fitting formulae, however, strongly underestimate the cosmic-shear power spectra. Halo models provide a better fit to cosmic shear-power spectra, but there are still noticeable deviations. (ii) Cosmic-shear B-modes induced by Born corrections and lens-lens coupling are at least three orders of magnitude smaller than cosmic-shear E-modes. Semi-analytic extensions to the linear approximation predict the right order of magnitude for the B-mode. Compared to the ray-tracing results, however, the semi-analytic predictions may differ by a factor two on small scales and also show a different scale dependence. (iii) The linear approximation may under- or overestimate the galaxy-galaxy-lensing shear signal by several percent due to the neglect of magnification bias, which may lead to a correlation between the shear and the observed number density of lenses. We conclude: (i) Current semi-analytic models need to be improved in order to match the degree of statistical accuracy expected for future weak-lensing surveys. (ii) Shear B-modes induced by corrections to the linear approximation are not important for future cosmic-shear surveys. (iii) Magnification bias can be important for galaxy-galaxy-lensing surveys.