The cosmology dependence of weak lensing cluster counts

TL;DR

This study shows that weak lensing cluster counts, derived from two-dimensional data, scale with cosmology similarly to three-dimensional mass functions, enabling their use in cosmological constraints.

Contribution

It demonstrates that weak lensing cluster counts can reliably constrain cosmology due to their close scaling with three-dimensional mass functions.

Findings

Projected-peak and 3D mass functions scale similarly with cosmology

Weak lensing cluster abundance can be used for cosmological constraints

Two-dimensional weak lensing data effectively probes cosmological parameters

Abstract

We present the main results of a numerical study of weak lensing cluster counting. We examine the scaling with cosmology of the projected-density-peak mass function. Our main conclusion is that the projected-peak and the three-dimensional mass functions scale with cosmology in an astonishingly close way. This means that, despite being derived from a two-dimensional field, the weak lensing cluster abundance can be used to constrain cosmology in the same way as the three-dimensional mass function probed by other types of surveys.