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Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Extracting intrinsic alignments in the Dark Energy Survey’s year 1 data, using the self-calibration method and LSST-DESC tools

  • Eske M Pedersen1,2,3
  • Leonel Medina-Varela2
  • Emily Phillips Longley4
  • Mustapha Ishak2
  • Joe Zuntz5
  • Chihway Chang6
  • C Danielle Leonard1
6 affiliations
  1. 1School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, Newcastle University , Herschel Building, NE1 7RU Newcastle-upon-Tyne ,
  2. 2The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson Department of Physics, , TX 75080 ,
  3. 3Harvard University Department of Physics, , 17 Oxford st., Cambridge, MA 02143 ,
  4. 4Duke University Department of Physics, , Durham NC 27708 ,
  5. 5Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh , Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, EH9 3HJ ,
  6. 6University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, , Chicago, IL 60637 ,
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Abstract

We present the implementation of a Self-Calibration of Intrinsic Alignments of galaxies as an extension to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC)’s weak lensing 3x2pt pipeline (TXPipe). As a demonstration, we have run this pipeline on the Dark Energy Survey (DES) year one data set. We find indications of a non-zero intrinsic alignment signal in the higher redshift bins, while in the lower bins our results look more uncertain. We believe this is caused by known issues with the individual galaxies photo-z estimation. This effect is particularly harmful for the self-calibration method, since it has high requirements for reliable estimation of the photo-zs, and the need for individual galaxy point estimates and tomographic binning to match. We show how different methods of recreating the redshift probability distribution can affect the detection of intrinsic alignment.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{pedersen2026extracting,
  title = {{Extracting intrinsic alignments in the Dark Energy Survey’s year 1 data, using the self-calibration method and LSST-DESC tools}},
  author = {Eske M Pedersen and Leonel Medina-Varela and Emily Phillips Longley and Mustapha Ishak and Joe Zuntz and Chihway Chang and C Danielle Leonard},
  journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1093/mnras/stag2063},
  url = {https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag2063/9005623},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Extracting intrinsic alignments in the Dark Energy Survey’s year 1 data, using the self-calibration method and LSST-DESC tools
AU  - Eske M Pedersen
AU  - Leonel Medina-Varela
AU  - Emily Phillips Longley
AU  - Mustapha Ishak
AU  - Joe Zuntz
AU  - Chihway Chang
AU  - C Danielle Leonard
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/30
JO  - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
DO  - 10.1093/mnras/stag2063
UR  - https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag2063/9005623
AB  - We present the implementation of a Self-Calibration of Intrinsic Alignments of galaxies as an extension to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC)’s weak lensing 3x2pt pipeline (TXPipe). As a demonstration, we have run this pipeline on the Dark Energy Survey (DES) year one data set. We find indications of a non-zero intrinsic alignment signal in the higher redshift bins, while in the lower bins our results look more uncertain. We believe this is caused by known issues with the individual galaxies photo-z estimation. This effect is particularly harmful for the self-calibration method, since it has high requirements for reliable estimation of the photo-zs, and the need for individual galaxy point estimates and tomographic binning to match. We show how different methods of recreating the redshift probability distribution can affect the detection of intrinsic alignment.
SN  - 0035-8711
SN  - 1365-2966
ER  -