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A distortion of very-high-redshift galaxy number counts by gravitational lensing

Author

Listed:
  • J. Stuart B. Wyithe

    (School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia)

  • Haojing Yan

    (Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, The Ohio State University)

  • Rogier A. Windhorst

    (School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University)

  • Shude Mao

    (Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
    National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012, China)

Abstract

Gravitational lensing distorts post-dark age Universe A measure of the star-forming activity that took place during the epoch of reionization — when the Universe was emerging from a dark age and neutral hydrogen was being reionized — can be obtained from the number counts of high-redshift galaxy candidates at redshifts z >∼7. Gravitational lensing by galaxies between these distant objects and us can complicate matters, however. A new theoretical modelling study suggests that gravitational lensing is likely to dominate the observed properties of galaxies with redshifts of z >∼12, where the instrumental limiting magnitude is expected to be brighter than the characteristic magnitude of the galaxy sample. This factor could alter number counts by an order of magnitude. Future surveys will therefore need to account for a significant gravitational lensing bias in high-redshift galaxy samples.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Stuart B. Wyithe & Haojing Yan & Rogier A. Windhorst & Shude Mao, 2011. "A distortion of very-high-redshift galaxy number counts by gravitational lensing," Nature, Nature, vol. 469(7329), pages 181-184, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:469:y:2011:i:7329:d:10.1038_nature09619
    DOI: 10.1038/nature09619
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