Luminous red galaxies in the Kilo-Degree Survey: selection with broad-band photometry and weak lensing measurements. Issue 3 (8th May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vakili, Mohammadjavad; Bilicki, Maciej; Hoekstra, Henk; Chisari, Nora Elisa; Brown, Michael J I; Georgiou, Christos; Kannawadi, Arun; Kuijken, Konrad; Wright, Angus H
• Is Part Of: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Volume 487:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 3715
• Page End: 3733
• Publication Date: 2019-05-08
• Subjects: gravitational lensing: weak -- methods: data analysis -- methods: statistical -- galaxies: distances and redshifts; Astronomy -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 520.5
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz1249
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0035-8711

Abstract

ABSTRACT: We use the overlap between multiband photometry of the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) and spectroscopic data based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Galaxy And Mass Assembly to infer the colour–magnitude relation of red-sequence galaxies. We then use this inferred relation to select luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the redshift range of 0.1 < z < 0.7 over the entire KiDS Data Release 3 footprint. We construct two samples of galaxies with different constant comoving densities and different luminosity thresholds. The selected red galaxies have photometric redshifts with typical photo- z errors of σ z ∼ 0.014(1 + z ) that are nearly uniform with respect to observational systematics. This makes them an ideal set of galaxies for lensing and clustering studies. As an example, we use the KiDS-450 cosmic shear catalogue to measure the mean tangential shear signal around the selected LRGs. We detect a significant weak lensing signal for lenses out to z ∼ 0.7.