Special Universe Talk: Weighing the Giants: Measuring Unbiased Weak Lensing Masses for X-ray Luminous Galaxy

by Douglas Applegate (Stanford)

Monday 10 Oct 2011, 13:30 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

seminar room (basement) (Cluster building)

Galaxy cluster cosmology has made impressive progress in the last few years, while current and upcoming surveys such as SPT, DES, and eRosita promise to make clusters the leading probe of the coming decade. Weak lensing calibration of mass-observable relations is essential for the most efficient use of these survey data, but only if lensing masses are unbiased to better than 5% accuracy. I will discuss how traditional lensing techniques are not yet at this level, and I will demonstrate how shear tomography with photometric redshifts may be used to meet this exacting standard. Finally, I will present the lensing follow up of 50 X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at 0.2 < z < 0.7, which holds potential for diverse science results and can serve as a pathfinder for future follow-up efforts.