Impact of the non-Gaussian covariance of the weak lensing power spectrum and bispectrum on cosmological parameter estimation

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the significance of non-Gaussian covariance in weak lensing spectra and its impact on cosmological parameter estimation, revealing potential biases in future precision surveys.

Contribution

It provides a numerical analysis of non-Gaussian covariance effects on weak lensing spectra and forecasts their impact on cosmological parameters using simulations and Fisher matrix analysis.

Findings

Non-Gaussian errors can degrade signal-to-noise ratio by up to a factor of 2-3.

The impact on cosmological parameter errors can reach 15%.

Dark energy figure of merit is significantly affected by non-Gaussian covariance.

Abstract

We study how well the Gaussian approximation is valid for computing the covariance matrices of the convergence power and bispectrum in weak gravitational lensing analyses. We focus on its impact on the cosmological parameter estimations by comparing the results with and without non-Gaussian error contribution in the covariance matrix. We numerically derive the covariance matrix as well as the cosmology dependence of the spectra from a large set of N-body simulations performed for various cosmologies and carry out Fisher matrix forecasts for tomographic weak lensing surveys with three source redshifts. After showing the consistency of the power and bispectra measured from our simulations with the state-of-the-art fitting formulas, we investigate the covariance matrix assuming a typical ongoing survey across 1500 deg^2 with the mean source number density of 30 arcmin^{-2} at the mean redshift z_s=1.0. Although the shape noise contributes a significant fraction to the total error budget and it mitigates the impact of the non-Gaussian error for this source number density, we find that the non-Gaussian error degrades the cumulative signal-to-noise ratio up to the maximum multipole of 2000 by a factor of about 2 (3) in the power (bi-) spectrum analysis. Its impact on the final cosmological parameter forecast with 6 parameters can be as large as 15% in the size of the one-dimensional statistical error. This can be a problem in future wide and deep weak lensing surveys for precision cosmology. We also show how much the dark energy figure of merit is affected by the non-Gaussian error contribution and demonstrate an optimal survey design with a fixed observational time.