Cosmological constraining power of the redshifts, heights, and angular clustering of weak gravitational lensing peaks

Broxterman, JC, Schaller, M, McCarthy, IG ORCID: 0000-0002-1286-483X, Elbers, W, Helly, J, Hoekstra, H, Kuijken, K, Salcido, J, Schaye, J, Schutte, N and Sellentin, E (2026) Cosmological constraining power of the redshifts, heights, and angular clustering of weak gravitational lensing peaks. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 553 (1). ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

Weak gravitational lensing (WL) peaks probe non-Gaussian information of the large-scale distribution of matter that is not captured by two-point lensing statistics. We study the cosmological potential of the height distribution, redshift distribution, and angular clustering of high-valued WL peaks using a Bayesian inference approach that mimics a $\textit{Euclid}$ analysis. We use a forthcoming dark-matter-only hypercube, which varies cosmology in a ten-dimensional space, including evolving dark energy, neutrino mass, decaying dark matter, and the running of the scalar spectral index. We find the individual WL peak statistics to be complementary, as the redshift distribution best constrains the matter density, $Ω_\mathrm{m}$, and the dark energy equation-of-state parameters, $w_0$, and $w_a$; the height distribution and angular clustering are most sensitive to the amplitude of the primordial power spectrum, $\ln(10^{10}A_\mathrm{s})$; while combining the three statistics allows us to also probe the baryon density, $Ω_\mathrm{b}$, and the Hubble parameter, $h$. A comparison to the shear two-point correlation function demonstrates that WL peaks alone outperform the commonly used statistics, while even tighter constraints are obtained when combining all. Considering the 2-dimensional $Ω_\mathrm{m}-\ln(10^{10}A_\mathrm{s})$ and $w_0-w_a$ parameter planes, we find that the redshift distribution outperforms the angular clustering and peak-height distributions. We study the impact of the smoothing scale and find that, typically, the smallest scales yield the best results and the figure of merit improves by a factor $\approx2$ when combining multiple scales.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	astro-ph.CO; astro-ph.CO; 5106 Nuclear and Plasma Physics; 5107 Particle and High Energy Physics; 51 Physical Sciences; 5106 Nuclear and Plasma Physics; 5107 Particle and High Energy Physics; 51 Physical Sciences; 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences; Astronomy & Astrophysics; 5101 Astronomical sciences; 5107 Particle and high energy physics; 5109 Space sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date of acceptance:	5 October 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	9 November 2026
Date Deposited:	09 Nov 2026 15:28
Last Modified:	09 Nov 2026 15:28
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/stag1905
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29853

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