The impact of camera optical alignments on weak lensing measures for the Dark Energy Survey

TL;DR

This study assesses how optical misalignments in telescope lenses affect weak lensing measurements in the Dark Energy Survey, emphasizing the importance of precise lens alignment for accurate cosmological observations.

Contribution

It quantifies the impact of lens tilt and de-centre on PSF quality and weak lensing measures, highlighting the significance of tilt accuracy and combined effects of multiple lens misalignments.

Findings

Perfect alignment yields PSF shear contribution of 0.04

Tilt misalignments are more critical than de-centre errors

Combined lens misalignments can double the detrimental effect

Abstract

Telescope Point Spread Function (PSF) quality is critical for realising the potential of cosmic weak lensing observations to constrain dark energy and test General Relativity. In this paper we use quantitative weak gravitational lensing measures to inform the precision of lens optical alignment, with specific reference to the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We compute optics spot diagrams and calculate the shear and flexion of the PSF as a function of position on the focal plane. For perfect optical alignment we verify the high quality of the DES optical design, finding a maximum PSF contribution to the weak lensing shear of 0.04 near the edge of the focal plane. However this can be increased by a factor of approximately three if the lenses are only just aligned within their maximum specified tolerances. We calculate the E and B-mode shear and flexion variance as a function of de-centre or tilt of each lens in turn. We find tilt accuracy to be a few times more important than de-centre, depending on the lens considered. Finally we consider the compound effect of de-centre and tilt of multiple lenses simultaneously, by sampling from a plausible range of values of each parameter. We find that the compound effect can be around twice as detrimental as when considering any one lens alone. Furthermore, this combined effect changes the conclusions about which lens is most important to align accurately. For DES, the tilt of the first two lenses is the most important.