Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Redshift distributions of the weak lensing source galaxies
Creators: name: Hoyle, B.
name: Gruen, D.
name: Bernstein, G. M.
name: Rau, M. M.
name: De Vicente, J.
name: Hartley, W. G.
name: Gaztanaga, E.
name: DeRose, J.
name: Troxel, M. A.
name: Davis, C.
name: Alarcon, A.
name: MacCrann, N.
name: Prat, J.
name: Sánchez, C.
name: Sheldon, E.
name: Wechsler, R. H.
name: Asorey, J.
name: Becker, M. R.
name: Bonnett, C.
name: Rosell, A. Carnero
name: Carollo, D.
name: Kind, M. Carrasco
name: Castander, F. J.
name: Cawthon, R.
name: Chang, C.
name: Childress, M.
name: Davis, T. M.
name: Drlica-Wagner, A.
name: Gatti, M.
name: Glazebrook, K.
name: Gschwend, J.
name: Hinton, S. R.
name: Hoormann, J. K.
name: Kim, A. G.
name: King, A.
name: Kuehn, K.
name: Lewis, G.
name: Lidman, C.
name: Lin, H.
name: Macaulay, E.
name: Maia, M. A. G.
name: Martini, P.
name: Mudd, D.
name: Möller, A.
name: Nichol, R. C.
name: Ogando, R. L. C.
name: Rollins, R. P.
name: Roodman, A.
name: Ross, A. J.
name: Rozo, E.
name: Rykoff, E. S.
name: Samuroff, S.
name: Sevilla-Noarbe, I.
name: Sharp, R.
name: Sommer, N. E.
name: Tucker, B. E.
name: Uddin, S. A.
name: Varga, T. N.
name: Vielzeuf, P.
name: Yuan, F.
name: Zhang, B.
name: Abbott, T. M. C.
name: Abdalla, F. B.
name: Allam, S.
name: Annis, J.
name: Bechtol, K.
name: Benoit-Lévy, A.
name: Bertin, E.
name: Brooks, D.
name: Buckley-Geer, E.
name: Burke, D. L.
name: Busha, M. T.
name: Capozzi, D.
name: Carretero, J.
name: Crocce, M.
name: D'Andrea, C. B.
name: da Costa, L. N.
name: DePoy, D. L.
name: Desai, S.
name: Diehl, H. T.
name: Doel, P.
name: Eifler, T. F.
name: Estrada, J.
name: Evrard, A. E.
name: Fernandez, E.
name: Flaugher, B.
name: Fosalba, P.
name: Frieman, J.
name: García-Bellido, J.
name: Gerdes, D. W.
name: Giannantonio, T.
name: Goldstein, D. A.
name: Gruendl, R. A.
name: Gutierrez, G.
name: Honscheid, K.
name: James, D. J.
name: Jarvis, M.
name: Jeltema, T.
name: Johnson, M. W. G.
name: Johnson, M. D.
name: Kirk, D.
name: Krause, E.
name: Kuhlmann, S.
name: Kuropatkin, N.
name: Lahav, O.
name: Li, T. S.
name: Lima, M.
name: March, M.
name: Marshall, J. L.
name: Melchior, P.
name: Menanteau, F.
name: Miquel, R.
name: Nord, B.
name: O'Neill, C. R.
name: Plazas, A. A.
name: Romer, A. K.
name: Sako, M.
name: Sanchez, E.
name: Santiago, B.
name: Scarpine, V.
name: Schindler, R.
name: Schubnell, M.
name: Smith, M.
name: Smith, R. C.
name: Soares-Santos, M.
name: Sobreira, F.
name: Suchyta, E.
name: Swanson, M. E. C.
name: Tarle, G.
name: Thomas, D.
name: Tucker, D. L.
name: Vikram, V.
name: Walker, A. R.
name: Weller, J.
name: Wester, W.
name: Wolf, R. C.
name: Yanny, B.
name: Zuntz, J.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We describe the derivation and validation of redshift distribution estimates and their uncertainties for the galaxies used as weak lensing sources in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 1 cosmological analyses. The Bayesian Photometric Redshift (BPZ) code is used to assign galaxies to four redshift bins between z=0.2 and 1.3, and to produce initial estimates of the lensing-weighted redshift distributions $n^i_{PZ}(z)$ for bin i. Accurate determination of cosmological parameters depends critically on knowledge of $n^i$ but is insensitive to bin assignments or redshift errors for individual galaxies. The cosmological analyses allow for shifts $n^i(z)=n^i_{PZ}(z-Δz^i)$ to correct the mean redshift of $n^i(z)$ for biases in $n^i_{\rm PZ}$. The $Δz^i$ are constrained by comparison of independently estimated 30-band photometric redshifts of galaxies in the COSMOS field to BPZ estimates made from the DES griz fluxes, for a sample matched in fluxes, pre-seeing size, and lensing weight to the DES weak-lensing sources. In companion papers, the $Δz^i$ are further constrained by the angular clustering of the source galaxies around red galaxies with secure photometric redshifts at 0.15
description: MNRAS accepted; 20 pages, 8 figures