Special Astrophysics Seminar

Studying Galaxies, Clusters, and Cosmology with Weak Lensing Magnification

Hendrik Hildebrandt

University of British Columbia

Weak gravitational lensing is one of the major methods to study the dark sector of the Universe on a large variety of mass- and length-scales. So far most observations employed the shear effect of weak lensing. Recently, it has been shown that also the magnification effect can be turned into a powerful, complimentary tool. In this talk I will review the theory behind magnification measurements and highlight advantages and weaknesses of this approach in comparison to shear-based measurements. Furthermore, I will present observations of weak lensing magnification induced by galaxies and galaxy clusters and explain how those will help us to answer open questions in the fields of galaxy-evolution and cluster-astrophysics as well as in cosmology.