Intrinsic and extrinsic gravitational flexions

TL;DR

This paper extends the linear intrinsic alignment model to include intrinsic flexions, analyzing their spectra, correlations with lensing flexions, and assessing their detectability in future weak lensing surveys.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism for intrinsic flexions, computes their spectra and correlations, and evaluates their observability in Euclid-like surveys.

Findings

Intrinsic flexions are smaller than lensing flexions.

Negative cross-correlation between intrinsic and extrinsic flexions.

Intrinsic flexions are difficult to measure with realistic noise levels.

Abstract

The topic of this paper is a generalisation of the linear model for intrinsic alignments of galaxies to intrinsic flexions: In this model, third moments of the brightness distribution reflect distortions of elliptical galaxies caused by third derivatives of the gravitational potential, or, equivalently, gradients of the tidal gravitational fields. With this extension of the linear model mediating between the brightness distribution and the tidal gravitational fields and with a quantification of the shape of the galaxy at third order provided by the HOLICs-formalism, we are able to compute angular spectra of intrinsic flexions and the cross-spectra with weak lensing flexions. Spectra for intrinsic flexions are typically an order of magnitude smaller than lensing flexions, exactly as in the case of intrinsic ellipticity in comparison to weak shear. We find a negative cross correlation between intrinsic and extrinsic gravitational flexions, too, complementing the analogous correlation between intrinsic and extrinsic ellipticity. After discussing the physical details of the alignment model to provide intrinsic flexions and their scaling properties, we quantify the observability of the intrinsic and extrinsic flexions and estimate with the Fisher-formalism how well the alignment parameter can be determined from a Euclid-like weak lensing survey. Intrinsic flexions are very difficult to measure and yield appreciable signals only with highly optimistic parameter choices and noise levels, while being basically undetectable for more realistisc flexion measurement errors.