2014/07/31 by M. A. Troxel, M.A. Troxel, Mustapha Ishak · 12 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #COSMIC cancer database #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gravitational lens #Gravitational lensing formalism #Observable #Strong gravitational lensing #Weak gravitational lensing #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2014.11.001
published as Physics Reports 558, 1-59, 2015 · 107 pages, 23 figures, matches version published in Physics Reports. Additions to discussion and new references included. Higher quality descriptive IA figures are available from the authors
openalex publication_date 2014/11/17 · arxiv created 2014/12/07 · arxiv updated 2015/06/11 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
The wealth of incoming and future cosmological observations will allow us to map out the structure and evolution of the observable universe to an unprecedented level of precision. Among these observations is the weak gravitational lensing of galaxies, e.g., cosmic shear that measures the minute distortions of background galaxy images by intervening cosmic structure. Weak lensing and cosmic shear promise to be a powerful probe of astrophysics and cosmology, constraining models of dark energy, measuring the evolution of structure in the universe, and testing theories of gravity on cosmic scales. However, the intrinsic alignment of galaxies -- their shape and orientation before being lensed -- may pose a great challenge to the use of weak gravitational lensing as an accurate cosmological probe, and has been identified as one of the primary physical systematic biases in cosmic shear studies. Correlations between this intrinsic alignment and the lensing signal can persist even for large physical separations, and isolating the effect of intrinsic alignment from weak lensing is not trivial. A great deal of work in the last two decades has been devoted to understanding and characterizing this intrinsic alignment, which is also a direct and complementary probe of structure formation and evolution in its own right. In this review, we report in a systematic way the state of our understanding of the intrinsic alignment of galaxies, with a particular emphasis on its large-scale impact on weak lensing measurements and methods for its isolation or mitigation. (Abridged)