Cosmic shear, or atmosphere? Modeling the atmosphere for dark energy measurements with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will image tens of billions of galaxies over ten years--a 100 times increase over previous surveys--enabling the most precise measurements of dark energy properties to date. Realizing the full potential of this powerful dataset requires an unprecedented understanding of observational effects that, if uncorrected, can bias the science results. One such source is the blurring of images due to optical turbulence in the atmosphere, which dominates the point-spread function (PSF) for ground-based instruments. This atmospheric effect imprints spatially correlated noise on scales (and with amplitudes) similar to the cosmological signal we will study: the spatial correlation of positions and shapes of galaxies on the plane of the sky due to gravitational lensing of light by the dark matter in the Universe. High-fidelity simulated astronomical images are an important tool in developing and measuring the performance of image-processing algorithms that will be needed to accurately and precisely account for sources of correlated noise such as the atmospheric PSF. This thesis presents a new simulation tool, psf-weather-station, that allows us to study and model the dependence of correlations in the atmospheric PSF on weather conditions at any observatory by leveraging data from weather forecasting models. We use this tool to simulate the atmospheric PSF predicted for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile and make quantitative predictions of two-point correlation functions in the size and shape of the PSF that are used in analyses of cosmic shear. We also explore the temporal behaviour of the atmospheric PSF using high-resolution speckle images of stars, recorded near Rubin Observatory, and simulate similar observations using pfs-weather-station.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hebert, Claire-Alice Caroline |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Burchat, Patricia |
| Thesis advisor | Burchat, Patricia |
| Thesis advisor | Moerner, William |
| Thesis advisor | Roodman, Aaron |
| Degree committee member | Moerner, William |
| Degree committee member | Roodman, Aaron |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Applied Physics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Claire-Alice Hebert. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Applied Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/vc035yz3635 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Claire-Alice Caroline Hebert
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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