The self similarity of weak lensing peaks

Understand

We study the statistics of weak lensing convergence peaks, such as their abundance and two-point correlation function (2PCF), for a wide range of cosmological parameters $\Omega_m$ and $\sigma_8$ within the standard $\Lambda$CDM paradigm, focusing on intermediate-height peaks with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of $1.5$ to $3.5$.

• We find that the cosmology dependence of the peak abundance can be described by a one-parameter fitting formula that is accurate to within $\sim3\%$.
• The peak 2PCFs are shown to feature a self-similar behaviour: if the peak separation is rescaled by the mean inter-peak distance, catalogues with different minimum peak SNR values have identical clustering, which suggests that the peak abundance and clustering are closely interconnected.
• A simple fitting model for the rescaled 2PCF is given, which together with the peak abundance model above can predict peak 2PCFs with an accuracy better than $\sim5\%$.