Using cosmic microwave background lensing to constrain the multiplicative bias of cosmic shear

Abstract

Weak gravitational lensing is one of the key probes of cosmology. Cosmic shear surveys aimed at measuring the distribution of matter in the universe are currently being carried out (Pan-STARRS) or planned for the coming decade (DES, LSST, EUCLID, WFIRST). Crucial to the success of these surveys is the control of systematics. In this work, a new method to constrain one such family of systematics, known as multiplicative bias, is proposed. This method exploits the cross-correlation between weak-lensing measurements from galaxy surveys and the ones obtained from high-resolution cosmic microwave background experiments. This cross-correlation is shown to have the power to break the degeneracy between the normalization of the matter power spectrum and the multiplicative bias of cosmic shear and to be able to constrain the latter to a few percent. © 2012 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.