Spectroscopic Tomography: A First Weak Lensing Detection Using Spectroscopic Redshifts Only

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the first spectroscopic tomographic weak lensing measurement using only spectroscopic redshifts, showing its potential for accurate mass estimation and cosmological studies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel spectrotomographic method for weak lensing using spectroscopic redshifts, reducing biases and enabling precise mass measurements of galaxy clusters.

Findings

Detected shear signal at >3.9 sigma significance

Shear signal scales with redshift as expected in ΛCDM

Measured amplitude consistent with X-ray mass estimates

Abstract

We describe the first spectroscopic tomographic (spectrotomographic) weak lensing measurement for a galaxy cluster based only on background galaxies with spectroscopically determined redshifts. We use the massive cluster A2029 to demonstrate the power of combining spectroscopy and lensing to obtain accurate masses and to overcome biases from contamination and photometric redshift errors. We detect the shear signal from the cluster at $>3.9 \sigma$. The shear signal scales with source redshift in a way that is consistent with the angular diameter distance ratio variation in a $\Lambda$CDM Universe. Furthermore, the amplitude of the measured signal is consistent with the X-ray mass. Upcoming spectroscopic instruments such as the Prime Focus Spectrograph on Subaru will permit spectrotomographic weak lensing measurements with S/N comparable to current photometric-redshift-based weak lensing measurements for hundreds of galaxy clusters. Thus, spectrotomography may enable sensitive cosmological constraints that complement and are independent of other measurement techniques.