Tomographic weak lensing bispectrum: a thorough analysis towards the next generation of galaxy surveys

Abstract: We address key points for an efficient implementation of likelihood codes for modern weak lensing large-scale structure surveys. Specifically, we focus on the joint weak lensing convergence power spectrum-bispectrum probe and we tackle the numerical challenges required by a realistic analysis. Under the assumption of (multivariate) Gaussian likelihoods, we have developed a high performance code that allows highly parallelised prediction of the binned tomographic observables and of their joint non-Gaussian covariance matrix accounting for terms up to the 6-point correlation function and super-sample effects. This performance allows us to qualitatively address several interesting scientific questions. We find that the bispectrum provides an improvement in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of about 10% on top of the power spectrum, making it a non-negligible source of information for future surveys. Furthermore, we are capable to test the impact of theoretical uncertainties in the halo model used to build our observables; with presently allowed variations we conclude that the impact is negligible on the S/N. Finally, we consider data compression possibilities to optimise future analyses of the weak lensing bispectrum. We find that, ignoring systematics, 5 equipopulated redshift bins are enough to recover the information content of a Euclid-like survey, with negligible improvement when increasing to 10 bins. We also explore principal component analysis and dependence on the triangle shapes as ways to reduce the numerical complexity of the problem.