An Analysis of DES Cluster Simulations through the IMCAT and Shapelets Weak Lensing Pipelines

TL;DR

This paper evaluates two independent weak lensing analysis pipelines on simulated galaxy cluster images, demonstrating their accuracy in recovering cluster velocity dispersion and highlighting the impact of analysis choices.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of two weak lensing pipelines on realistic simulations and makes the simulated data publicly available for further testing.

Findings

Both pipelines accurately recover the cluster velocity dispersion.

Analysis choices significantly influence shear profile measurements.

Simulated images are publicly accessible for community use.

Abstract

We have run two completely independent weak lensing analysis pipelines on a set of realistic simulated images of a massive galaxy cluster with a singular isothermal sphere profile (galaxy velocity dispersion sigma_v=1250 km/ sec). The suite of images was constructed using the simulation tools developed by the Dark Energy Survey. We find that both weak lensing pipelines can accurately recover the velocity dispersion of our simulated clusters, suggesting that current weak lensing tools are accurate enough for measuring the shear profile of massive clusters in upcoming large photometric surveys. We also demonstrate how choices of some cuts influence the final shear profile and sigma_v measurement. Analogously to the STEP program, we make all of these cluster simulation images publically available for other groups to analyze through their own weak lensing pipelines.