Detection of weak gravitational lensing distortions of distant galaxies by cosmic dark matter at large scales

David M. Wittman (), J. Anthony Tyson, David Kirkman, Ian Dell'Antonio and Gary Bernstein
Additional contact information
David M. Wittman: Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies
Ian Dell'Antonio: Kitt Peak National Observatory, NOAO
Gary Bernstein: University of Michigan

Nature, 2000, vol. 405, issue 6783, 143-148

Abstract: Abstract Most of the matter in the Universe is not luminous, and can be observed only through its gravitational influence on the appearance of luminous matter. Weak gravitational lensing is a technique that uses the distortions of the images of distant galaxies as a tracer of dark matter: such distortions are induced as the light passes through large-scale distributions of dark matter in the foreground. The patterns of the induced distortions reflect the density of mass along the line of sight and its distribution, and the resulting ‘cosmic shear’ can be used to distinguish between alternative cosmologies. But previous attempts to measure this effect have been inconclusive. Here we report the detection of cosmic shear on angular scales of up to half a degree using 145,000 galaxies and along three separate lines of sight. We find that the dark matter is distributed in a manner consistent with either an open universe, or a flat universe that is dominated by a cosmological constant. Our results are inconsistent with the standard cold-dark-matter model.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35012001 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:405:y:2000:i:6783:d:10.1038_35012001

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35012001

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().