Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Cosmology from cosmic shear and robustness to modeling uncertainty

This work and its companion paper, Amon et al. [Phys. Rev. D 105, 023514 (2022)], present cosmic shear measurements and cosmological constraints from over 100 million source galaxies in the Darki Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 data. We constrain the lensing amplitude parameter S-8 equivalent to sigma(8)root Omega(m)/0.3 at the 3% level in Lambda CDM: S-8 = 0.759(-0.023)(+0.025) (68% CL). Our constraint is at the 2% level when using angular scale cuts that are optimized for the Lambda CDM analysis: S-8 = 0.772(-0.017)(+0.018) (68% CL). With cosmic shear alone, we find no statistically significant constraint on the dark energy equation-of-state parameter at our present statistical power. We carry out our analysis blind, and compare our measurement with constraints from two other contemporary weak lensing experiments: the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) and Hyper-Suprime Camera Subaru Strategic Program (HSC). We additionally quantify the agreement between our data and external constraints from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Our DES Y3 result under the assumption of ACDM is found to be in statistical agreement with Planck 2018, although favors a lower S-8 than the CMB-inferred value by 2.3 sigma (a p -value of 0.02). This paper explores the robustness of these cosmic shear results to modeling of intrinsic alignments, the matter power spectrum and baryonic physics. We additionally explore the statistical preference of our data for intrinsic alignment models of different complexity. The fiducial cosmic shear model is tested using synthetic data, and we report no biases greater than 0.3 sigma in the plane of S-8 x Omega(m) caused by uncertainties in the theoretical models.

Automated summary

This paper presents cosmic shear measurements and cosmological constraints from the Darki Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 data, using over 100 million source galaxies. The lensing amplitude parameter S-8 is constrained at the 3% level in the ΛCDM model, and the robustness of the results to modeling of intrinsic alignments is explored. Constraints from other weak lensing experiments and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) are compared, and the statistical preference for different complexity intrinsic alignment models is examined.