The Statistics of Weak Lensing at Small Angular Scales: Probability Distribution Function

Abstract

Weak gravitational lensing surveys have the potential to directly probe mass density fluctuation in the universe. Recent studies have shown that it is possible to model the statistics of the convergence field at small angular scales by modeling the statistics of the underlying density field in the highly nonlinear regime. We propose a new method to model the complete probability distribution function of the convergence field as a function of smoothing angle and source redshift. The model relies on a hierarchical ansatz for the behavior of higher order correlations of the density field. We compare our results with ray tracing simulations and find very good agreement over a range of smoothing angles. Whereas the density probability distribution function is not sensitive to the cosmological model, the probability distribution function for the convergence can be used to constrain both the power spectrum and cosmological parameters.