all projects tagged alignments

intrinsic alignments

2010

Weak lensing operates under the assumption of intrinsically uncorrelated galaxy shapes, which might not be true because galaxies experience correlated tidal gravitational fields and share a similar angular momentum generation. We have worked on tidal interaction models for galaxies to derive ellipticity correlations for investigating their contaminating effect in weak lensing parameter inference. Starting from models of tidal shearing and tidal torquing for the orientation of elliptical and spiral galaxies, we are constructing more elaborate models for predicting and investigating intrinsic alignments, and hope to apply them to Euclid data.