Unprecedentedly Wide and Sharp Dark Matter Map and the Mystery of the Accelerated Universe

It is important to note that growth rate cannot be probed well if we only observe visible matter (stars and galaxies). This is because we now know that nearly 80 % of the matter is an invisible substance called dark matter. The team adopted the ‘weak gravitation lensing technique.’ The images of distant galaxies are slightly distorted by the gravitational field generated by the foreground dark matter distribution. Analysis of the systematic distortion enables us to reconstruct the foreground dark matter distribution.

This technique is observationally very demanding because the distortion of each galaxy is generally very subtle. Precise shape measurements of faint and apparently small galaxies are required. This motivated the team to develop Hyper Suprime-Cam. They have been carrying out a wide field imaging survey using Hyper Suprime-Cam since March 2014. At this writing in February 2018, 60 % of the survey has been completed.

Unprecedentedly wide and sharp dark matter map

In this release, the team presents the dark matter map based on the imaging data taken by April 2016. This is only 11 % of the planned final map, but it is already unprecedentedly wide. There has never been such a sharp dark matter map covering such a wide area.

Imaging observations are made through five different color filters. By combining these color data, it is possible to make a crude estimate of the distances to the faint background galaxies (called photometric redshift). At the same time, the lensing efficiency becomes most prominent when the lens is located directly between the distant galaxy and the observer. Using the photometric redshift information, galaxies are grouped into redshift bins. Using this grouped galaxy sample, dark matter distribution is reconstructed using tomographic methods and thus the 3D distribution can be obtained. Data for 30 square degrees are used to reconstruct the redshift range between 0.1 (~1.3 G light-years) and 1.0 (~8 G light-years). At the redshift of 1.0, the angular span corresponds to 1.0 G x 0.25 G light-years. This 3D dark matter mass map is also quite new. This is the first time the increase in the number of dark matter halos over time can be seen observationally.

What the dark matter halo count suggests and future prospects

The team counted the number of dark matter halos whose lensing signal is above a certain threshold. This is one of the simplest measurements of the growth rate. The model is based on the standard LCDM model using the observation of cosmic microwave background as the seed of the fluctuations. It is suggested that the number count of the dark matter halos is less than what is expected from LCDM. This could indicate there is a flaw in LCDM and that we might have to consider an alternative rather than the simple cosmological constant (Note 1).

The statistical significance is, however, still limited as the large error bars suggest. There has been no conclusive evidence to reject LCDM, but many astronomers are interested in testing LCDM because discrepancies can be a useful probe to unlock the mystery of the accelerating Universe. Further observation and analysis are needed to confirm the discrepancy with higher significance. There are some other probes of the growth rate and such analysis are also underway (e.g. angular correlation of galaxy shapes) in the team to check the validity of standard LCDM.

The projects are supported by Grants-In-Aid by MEXT and JSPS JP15H05892, JP15H05887, JP15H05893, JP15K21733, JP26800093, JP15K17600, JP16H01089 as well as JST’s CREST JPMJCR1414.

Note 1: Empty space is known to have energy caused by quantum effects and this is one candidate for the source of the cosmological constant. However, the energy density of the cosmological constant is many orders of magnitude weaker than what would be predicted based on this “vacuum energy” and it is hard to reconcile the discrepancy. Astronomers started to consider the existence of some other physical mechanism to explain the energy density, that concept is now called dark energy. The energy density can change over time in this generalization. If the dark energy was stronger in the past, the acceleration would have been more significant and suppressed the growth rate. This would result in fewer dark matter halos.

Contacts and sources:

National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

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Miyazaki et al. 2018, “A large sample of shear-selected clusters from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program S16A Wide field mass maps”, PASJ, 70, S27
Oguri et al. 2018 “Two- and three-dimensional wide-field weak lensing mass maps from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program S16A data”, PASJ, 70, S26