Cosmological Constraints From Weak Lensing Peak Statistics With CFHT Stripe 82 Survey

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that weak lensing peak statistics from CFHT Stripe 82 data can effectively constrain cosmological parameters, complementing traditional methods and aligning with Planck and WMAP9 results.

Contribution

It introduces the use of weak lensing peak statistics for cosmological constraints and explores their potential to simultaneously constrain halo properties.

Findings

Peak statistics constrain $ ilde{ m oldsymbol{ m u}}$ in $ u=[3,6]$ range.

Constraints on $ ilde{ m oldsymbol{ m u}}$ are consistent with Planck and WMAP9.

Peak statistics provide a complementary and independent probe of cosmology.

Abstract

We derived constraints on cosmological parameters using weak lensing peak statistics measured on the $\sim130~{\rm deg}^2$ of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey (CS82). This analysis demonstrates the feasibility of using peak statistics in cosmological studies. For our measurements, we considered peaks with signal-to-noise ratio in the range of $\nu=[3,6]$. For a flat $\Lambda$CDM model with only $(\Omega_{\rm m}, \sigma_8)$ as free parameters, we constrained the parameters of the following relation $\Sigma_8=\sigma_8(\Omega_{\rm m}/0.27)^{\alpha}$ to be: $\Sigma_8=0.82 \pm 0.03 $ and $\alpha=0.43\pm 0.02$. The $\alpha$ value found is considerably smaller than the one measured in two-point and three-point cosmic shear correlation analyses, showing a significant complement of peak statistics to standard weak lensing cosmological studies. The derived constraints on $(\Omega_{\rm m}, \sigma_8)$ are fully consistent with the ones from either WMAP9 or Planck. From the weak lensing peak abundances alone, we obtained marginalised mean values of $\Omega_{\rm m}=0.38^{+0.27}_{-0.24}$ and $\sigma_8=0.81\pm 0.26$. Finally, we also explored the potential of using weak lensing peak statistics to constrain the mass-concentration relation of dark matter halos simultaneously with cosmological parameters.