Power Spectrum Covariance of Weak Gravitational Lensing

Abstract

Weak gravitational lensing observations probe the spectrum and evolution of density fluctuations and the cosmological parameters which govern them. At low redshifts, the non-linear gravitational evolution of large scale structure produces a non-Gaussian covariance in the shear power spectrum measurements that affects their translation into cosmological parameters. Using the dark matter halo approach, we study the covariance of binned band power spectrum estimates and the four point function of the dark matter density field that underlies it. We compare this semi-analytic estimate to results from N-body numerical simulations and find good agreement. We find that for a survey out to z ~ 1, the power spectrum covariance increases the errors on cosmological parameters determined under the Gaussian assumption by about 15%.