The Influence of Galaxy Formation Physics on Weak Lensing Tests of General Relativity

Understand

Forthcoming projects such as the DES, a JDEM, and LSST, aim to measure weak lensing shear correlations with unprecedented accuracy.

• Weak lensing observables are sensitive to both the distance-redshift relation and the growth of structure in the Universe.
• If the cause of accelerated cosmic expansion is dark energy within general relativity (GR), both cosmic distances and structure growth are governed by the properties of dark energy.
• Consequently, one may use lensing to check for this consistency and test GR.