Existing Weak Lensing simulation suites

At the current stage of Weak gravitational lensing research, large numerical simulations are required for analyzing observations; the LensTools python package provides an API to interact with some already existing simulated datasets (mainly convergence and shear maps for different cosmological models), such as

  1. The IGS1 simulations: this simulated dataset contains 1000 realizations of single redshift convergence and shear maps for six different cosmological parammeter combinations (a fiducial model and some variations of the quadruplet \((\Omega_m,w,\sigma_8,n_s)\)). The fiducial model is based on 45 independent N-body simulations and the variations are based on 5 independent N-body simulations (where \(N=512^3\))
  2. The CFHTemu1 simulations: this simulated dataset contains 1000 realizations of convergence maps with the source redshift distribution of the CFHTLens survey; the simulated foregrounds are available for 91 different cosmological parameter variations of the triplet \((\Omega_m,w,\sigma_8)\)

This is an example on how you can use the LensTools API to interact with the simulations: suppose you have a local copy of the IGS1 simulations, which you saved in ‘/user/igs1’ and you didn’t modify the original directory tree. Then here is how you can interact with the maps

>>> from lenstools.simulations import IGS1

#Instantiate one of the models, for example the reference one
>>> igs1_ref = IGS1(root_path="/user/igs1",H0=72.0,Om0=0.26,sigma8=0.798,ns=0.96,w0=-1)

#Now you can access the names of the individual realizations
>>> igs1_ref.getNames(2,z=1.0)

/user/igs1/m-512b240_Om0.260_Ol0.740_w-1.000_ns0.960_si0.798/Maps/WL-conv_m-512b240_Om0.260_Ol0.740_w-1.000_ns0.960_si0.798_4096xy_0002r_0029p_0100z_og.gre.fit

>>> igs1_ref.getNames(3,z=1.0,big_fiducial_set=True)

/user/igs1/m-512b240_Om0.260_Ol0.740_w-1.000_ns0.960_si0.798_f/Maps/WL-conv_m-512b240_Om0.260_Ol0.740_w-1.000_ns0.960_si0.798_4096xy_0003r_0029p_0100z_og.gre.fit

#Or you can load the images directly in memory
>>> image = igs1_ref.load(2,z=1.0)

#This wraps the image in a ConvergenceMap instance, now you can, for example, display some info and visualize the map
>>> image.info

Pixels on a side: 2048
Pixel size: 6.08923828125 arcsec
Total angular size: 3.4641 deg
lmin=1.0e+02 ; lmax=1.5e+05

>>> image.visualize()
../../examples/conv_map.png

Read more in the API section to learn what you can do with ConvergenceMap instances; while LensTools provides the API to interact with a local copy of these simulated datasets, it does not provide the datasets themselves; to obtain the IGS1 dataset please email Jan M. Kratochvil, to obtain the CFHTemu1 dataset please email Andrea Petri