2dFLenS and KiDS: Determining source redshift distributions with cross-correlations

Understand

We develop a statistical estimator to infer the redshift probability distribution of a photometric sample of galaxies from its angular cross-correlation in redshift bins with an overlapping spectroscopic sample.

• This estimator is a minimum variance weighted quadratic function of the data: a quadratic estimator.
• This extends and modifies the methodology presented by McQuinn & White (2013).
• The derived source redshift distribution is degenerate with the source galaxy bias, which must be constrained via additional assumptions.