We present the methodology for a joint cosmological analysis of weak gravitational lensing from the fourth data release of the ESO Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-1000) and galaxy clustering from the partially overlapping Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and the 2-degree Field Lensing Survey (2dFLenS). Cross-correlations between BOSS and 2dFLenS galaxy positions and source galaxy ellipticities have been incorporated into the analysis, necessitating the development of a hybrid model of non-linear scales that blends perturbative and non-perturbative approaches, and an assessment of signal contributions by astrophysical effects. All weak lensing signals were measured consistently via Fourier-space statistics that are insensitive to the survey mask and display low levels of mode mixing. The calibration of photometric redshift distributions and multiplicative gravitational shear bias has been updated, and a more complete tally of residual calibration uncertainties was propagated into the likelihood. A dedicated suite of more than 20 000 mocks was used to assess the performance of covariance models and to quantify the impact of survey geometry and spatial variations of survey depth on signals and their errors. The sampling distributions for the likelihood and the χ2 goodness-of-fit statistic have been validated, with proposed changes for calculating the effective number of degrees of freedom. The prior volume was explicitly mapped, and a more conservative, wide top-hat prior on the key structure growth parameter S8 = σ8 (Ωm/0.3)1/2 was introduced. The prevalent custom of reporting S8 weak lensing constraints via point estimates derived from its marginal posterior is highlighted to be easily misinterpreted as yielding systematically low values of S8, and an alternative estimator and associated credible interval are proposed. Known systematic effects pertaining to weak lensing modelling and inference are shown to bias S8 by no more than 0.1 standard deviations, with the caveat that no conclusive validation data exist for models of intrinsic galaxy alignments. Compared to the previous KiDS analyses, S8 constraints are expected to improve by 20% for weak lensing alone and by 29% for the joint analysis.
We constrain the luminosity and redshift dependence of the intrinsic alignment (IA) of a nearly volume-limited sample of luminous red galaxies selected from the fourth public data release of the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS-1000). To measure the shapes of the galaxies, we used two complementary algorithms, finding consistent IA measurements for the overlapping galaxy sample. The global significance of IA detection across our two independent luminous red galaxy samples, with our favoured method of shape estimation, is ∼10.7σ. We find no significant dependence with redshift of the IA signal in the range 0.2 < z < 0.8, nor a dependence with luminosity below Lr ≲ 2.9 × 1010 h−2Lr, ⊙. Above this luminosity, however, we find that the IA signal increases as a power law, although our results are also compatible with linear growth within the current uncertainties. This behaviour motivates the use of a broken power law model when accounting for the luminosity dependence of IA contamination in cosmic shear studies.
Gravitational lensing magnification modifies the observed spatial distribution of galaxies and can severely bias cosmological probes of large-scale structure if not accurately modelled. Standard approaches to modelling this magnification bias may not be applicable in practice as many galaxy samples have complex, often implicit, selection functions. We propose and test a procedure to quantify the magnification bias induced in clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing (GGL) signals in galaxy samples subject to a selection function beyond a simple flux limit. The method employs realistic mock data to calibrate an effective luminosity function slope, αobs, from observed galaxy counts, which can then be used with the standard formalism. We demonstrate this method for two galaxy samples derived from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) in the redshift ranges 0.2 < z ≤ 0.5 and 0.5 < z ≤ 0.75, complemented by mock data built from the MICE2 simulation. We obtain αobs = 1.93 ± 0.05 and αobs = 2.62 ± 0.28 for the two BOSS samples. For BOSS-like lenses, we forecast a contribution of the magnification bias to the GGL signal between the multipole moments, ℓ, of 100 and 4600 with a cumulative signal-to-noise ratio between 0.1 and 1.1 for sources from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), between 0.4 and 2.0 for sources from the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey (HSC), and between 0.3 and 2.8 for ESA Euclid-like source samples. These contributions are significant enough to require explicit modelling in future analyses of these and similar surveys. Our code is publicly available within the MagBEt module (https://github.com/mwiet/MAGBET).
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