Weak lensing constraints on galaxy halos

Abstract

Weak gravitational lensing has become an important tool to study the properties of dark matter halos around galaxies, thanks to the advent of large panoramic cameras on 4m class telescopes. This area of research has been developing rapidly in the past few years, and in these proceedings we present some results based on the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey, thus highlighting what can be achieved with current data sets. We present results on the measurement of virial masses as a function of luminosity and the extent of dark matter halos. Much larger surveys are underway or planned, which will result in an impressive improvement in the accuracy of the measurements. However, the interpretation of future results will rely more and more on comparison with numerical simulations, thus providing direct tests of galaxy formation models.