Non-linear infusion of intrinsic alignment and source clustering: impact on non-Gaussian cosmic shear statistics

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ID: 318756
2026
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Abstract
Abstract Intrinsic alignments (IA) of galaxies is one of the key secondary signals to cosmic shear measurements, and must be modeled to interpret weak lensing data and infer the correct cosmology. There are large uncertainties in the physical description of IA, and analytical calculations are often out of reach for weak lensing statistics beyond two-point functions. We present here a set of six flexible IA models infused directly into weak lensing simulations, constructed from the mass shells, the projected tidal fields and, optionally, dark matter halo catalogues. We start with the non-linear linear alignment (NLA) and progressively sophisticate the galaxy bias and the tidal coupling models, including the commonly-used extended NLA (also known as the e-NLA or δ-NLA) and the tidal torque (TT) models. We validate our methods with MCMC analyses from two-point shear statistics, then compute the impact on non-Gaussian cosmic shear probes from these catalogues as well as from reconstructed convergence maps. We find that the δ-NLA model has by far the largest impact on most probes, at times more than twice the strength of the NLA. We also observe large differences between the IA models in under-dense regions, which makes minima, void profiles and lensing PDF the best probes for model rejection. Furthermore, our bias models allow us to separately study the source-clustering term for each of these probes, finding good agreement with the existing literature, and extending the results to these new probes. The third-order aperture mass statistics ($M_{\rm ap}^3$) and the integrated three-point functions are particularly sensitive to this when including low-redshift data, often exceeding a 20 % impact on the data vector. Our IA models are straightforward to implement and rescale from a single simulated IA-infused galaxy catalogue, allowing for fast model exploration.
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Authors J Harnois-Déraps, N Šarčević, L Medina Varela, J Armijo, C T Davies, N van Alfen, J Blazek, L Castiblanco, Anik Halder, K Heitmann, P Larsen, L Linke, J Liu, C MacMahon-Gellér, L Porth, S Rangel, Cora Uhlemann
Journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stag1213
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1213
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