The weak lensing and clustering of SDSS III galaxies: from astrophysics to cosmology (Special Theoretical Physics Seminar)

Weak gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for understanding how
galaxies populate dark matter halos. We use the publicly-available
CFHTLenS galaxy catalog with shapes and photometric redshift
information in order to measure the weak lensing signal of (CMASS)
galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Baryon Oscillation
Spectroscopic Survey. By combining with the measurement of the
projected auto-correlation function of CMASS galaxies over the entire
BOSS DR11 area, we fit a halo model to the measurements assuming a
ΛCDM cosmological model. I will present astrophysical constraints on
the halo occupation distribution of CMASS galaxies, the structure of
their dark matter halos, and the amount of stellar mass within these
galaxies obtained from our analysis. Finally, I will also present
cosmological constraints on the matter density parameter and amplitude
of fluctuations using this new data. I will contrast these and our
previous results with those obtained from the cosmic microwave
background experiment Planck and discuss the interesting tensions
between these results.