Gravitational lensing in the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS)

Understand

The observed brightness of Type Ia supernovae is affected by gravitational lensing caused by the mass distribution along the line of sight, which introduces an additional dispersion into the Hubble diagram.

• We look for evidence of lensing in the SuperNova Legacy Survey 3-year data set.
• We investigate the correlation between the residuals from the Hubble diagram and the gravitational magnification based on a modeling of the mass distribution of foreground galaxies.
• A deep photometric catalog, photometric redshifts, and well established mass luminosity relations are used.