Impact of baryons and super-cluster environments on weak lensing measurements

We use a combination of full hydrodynamic and dark matter only simulations to investigate the effect that super-cluster environments and baryonic physics have on the matter power spectrum. This is done by re-simulating a sample of super-cluster sub-volumes, identified in a large cosmologically representative dark matter only simulation, along with a random control sample. On large scales we find that the matter power spectrum measured from our super-cluster sample has at least twice as much power as that measured from our random sample, while on small scales the super-cluster sample has less power than the random sample. Our investigation of the effect of baryonic physics on the matter power spectrum is found to be in agreement with previous studies. However, we find that the effect of environment on the matter power spectrum is dominant over the effect of baryons. In addition, we investigate the effect of targeting a cosmologically non-representative, super-cluster region of the sky on the weak lensing shear power spectrum. We do this by generating shear and convergence maps using a line of sight integration technique, which intercepts our random and supercluster sub-volumes. We find the convergence power spectrum measured from our super-cluster sample has a larger amplitude than that measured from the random sample at all scales, and by more than a factor of two for $\ell <10^3$. We frame our results within the context of the Super-CLuster Assisted Shear Survey (Super-CLASS), which aims to measure the cosmic shear signal in the radio band by targeting a region of the sky that contains five Abell clusters. Assuming the Super-CLASS survey will have a source density of 1.5 galaxies/arcmin$^2$, we forecast a detection significance of $2.7^{+1.5}_{-1.2}$, which indicates that the Super-CLASS project will likely make a cosmic shear detection with radio data alone.