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# Three-dimensional black hole entropy

## 1 Introduction

The Einstein-Hilbert action in three dimensions, with a negative cosmological constant (see e.g. ) can be rewritten in terms of Chern-Simons theory with gauge group $`SL(2,R)\times SL(2,R)`$ . It is worth studying that Chern-Simons theory in detail for several reasons. One reason is that gravitational quantum theories on spaces with negative cosmological constant have been shown to be holographically dual to gauge theories on the boundary, in the context of string theory. The prime example is the correspondence between Type IIB string theory on $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ which is dual to $`N=4`$ super Yang-Mills . On the other hand we know that Chern-Simons theory on $`R\times D`$ where $`D`$ is a disk is dual to a chiral Wess-Zumino-Witten model on the boundary. It should be instructive to study holographic duality in an example that incorporates features of both theories.

Our focus in this paper will be slightly different though. We will first of all map out in detail the correpondence between Chern-Simons states and their spacetime interpretation. We will try to use that knowledge to recompute the entropy of the BTZ black hole . We attempt in two different ways to compute the entropy and show that in the non-unitary theory, there seem to be too many states present to agree with the entropy formula. On the other hand, the minimal unitary truncation has too few degrees of freedom. We thus show how unitarity and the demand of modular invariance of the BCFT seem to overconstrain the black hole counting problem in this context. Our computation differs in crucial respects from those in the literature: we analyze very concretely the boundary conformal field theory, with modular invariant spectrum, that is induced by the Chern-Simons theory on the boundary and pay attention to the modular invariance of the proposed spectrum, as well as to the minimal conformal weight appearing in the theory.

In section 2 we review the Chern-Simons formulation of gravity in three dimensions. In the next section, we discuss quantization of $`SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons theory on a disk with a puncture and map out the correspondence between classical weights and quantum Hilbert spaces. Using that correspondence we make a first connection with BTZ black holes and particle excitations in section 4, and we discuss a gravitational BPS bound. In sections 5 and 6 we analyze in detail why it is difficult to account for the BTZ entropy in this framework.

## 2 Chern-Simons gravity

We briefly discuss the Chern-Simons formulation of three-dimensional gravity with a negative cosmological constant. We remind the reader that we can write the gravity action in three dimensions as an $`SL(2,R)\times SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons action (for conventions see appendix A):

$`S[A^+]_{CS}S[A^{}]_{CS}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _M}Tr\left(A^+dA^++{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}(A^+)^3\right){\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _M}Tr\left(A^{}dA^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}(A^{})^3\right)`$ (1)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi l}}{\displaystyle _M}\left(e_aϵ^{abc}R_{bc}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3l^2}}ϵ^{abc}e_ae_be_c\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi l}}{\displaystyle _M}e^a\omega _a,`$
where $`A^\pm =\omega \pm \frac{e}{l}`$ are two $`SL(2,R)`$ gauge fields and $`e`$ is the dreibein and $`\omega `$ is the spin connection one-form. The Newton constant $`G`$ and the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ are determined by the formulas $`k=\frac{l}{4G}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=l^2`$, respectively. Thus the Chern-Simons action is equal to the Einstein-Hilbert action in three dimensions with cosmological constant plus a boundary term, which is half the usual Gibbons-Hawking boundary term (see e.g. ). We will henceforth take the Chern-Simons theory as the starting point for studying three-dimensional gravity, without adding any other boundary term. Hence, the consistent boundary conditions on our fields are

$`{\displaystyle _M}Tr(A^\pm \delta A^\pm )=0.`$ (2)
We should warn at the start that there are fundamental differences between this theory and our intuition for gravitational theories. The most striking difference between the theory of quantum gravity that we obtain in this way and our intuition, is that in the Chern-Simons theory we allow for any gauge connection, including the trivial one which would give rise to a singular geometry in the metric formulation. In other words, the path integral contains an integral over singular geometries. (That is in fact a feature of the quantum theory that makes it renormalizable .)

Now that we have established the point of view that we will take on three-dimensional quantum gravity in the Chern-Simons formulation, we make a substantial digression. We first study $`SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons theory in some detail to acquaint the reader with the necessary technical ingredients, without at first instance doubling the degrees of freedom because of the product gauge group $`SL(2,R)\times SL(2,R)`$ relevant to the gravitational theory. After this useful digression, we will return to recombine the ingredients for the product gauge group, i.e. the theory of gravitation.

## 3 $`SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons

### Review

We first fix our conventions for Chern-Simons theory. We define the Chern-Simons action as:

$`S_{CS}[A]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _M}Tr\left(AdA+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}A^3\right).`$ (3)
We take the trace in the fundamental (Tr) to have normalization $`Tr(T_aT_b)=\frac{1}{2}\eta _{ab}`$ where $`\eta _{ab}=diag(1,+1,+1)`$ and $`a\{0,1,2\}`$. (For compact gauge groups $`SU(N)`$ (where $`\eta _{ab}=\delta _{ab}`$), this would lead to the only consistent values for $`k`$ being integers. For $`SL(2,R)`$ there is no such restriction at this stage.)

At first, we are interested in Chern-Simons theory on a base manifold $`M`$ that has the topology of a real line (parametrized by the time $`t`$) times a disk with a puncture. To the puncture we associate matter in an irreducible representation of the gauge group. The Chern-Simons action is then supplemented by the particle action $`S_p[A,\chi ]`$:

$`S_{coupled}[A,\chi ]`$ $`=`$ $`S_{CS}[A]+S_p[A,\chi ]`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`S_{CS}[A]+{\displaystyle 𝑑tTr(\lambda \chi ^1(t)(_t+A_t)\chi (t))}.`$
For compact gauge groups, $`\lambda `$ is a weight for the root system of the Lie algebra of the gauge group. We will see how this statement becomes modified for non-compact groups. We will choose a boundary condition

$`(lA_t\pm A_\varphi )|_M=0,`$ (5)
which is consistent with (2), and we first perform the path-integration over $`A_t`$, which gives the following constraint:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2\pi }}F_{12}(t,x^i)+\chi (t)\lambda \chi ^1(t)\delta ^{(2)}(x^iP)`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (6)
where $`P`$ denotes the puncture in the disk coordinatized by $`x^i`$ (where $`i\{1,2\}`$) . We can solve the constraint in terms of a connection that is almost pure gauge, and substitute the solution in the action to obtain the new action

$`S[U]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _M}Tr\left(U^1_\varphi UU^1\left(_t\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{l}}_\varphi \right)U\right)𝑑t𝑑\varphi +{\displaystyle \frac{k}{12\pi }}{\displaystyle _M}Tr(U^1dU)^3`$ (7)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _M}Tr\left(\lambda U^1\left(_t\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{l}}_\varphi \right)U\right).`$
The system has reduced to a chiral WZW model on the boundary circle coupled to a matter source . For compact groups, we know that when we quantize this system, the Hilbert space is a representation of the chiral current algebra which is the Verma module built on the representation of the gauge group with weight $`\lambda \rho `$ (where $`\rho `$ is half the sum of the positive roots), modded out by the null vectors.

### Extension

Now we want to analyze how that last statement is modified in $`SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons theory. To study that problem, it is useful to remind ourselves of how we can quantize a particle on an $`SU(2)`$ manifold using the method of orbits. Namely, we first concentrate on the particle action in (4) and ignore the Chern-Simons action and coupling. We can quantize a particle with resulting quantum spin $`j`$, by starting with a classical particle action that is based on the classical weight $`(j+\frac{1}{2})\alpha `$, where $`\alpha `$ is the single simple root of $`SU(2)`$ normalized such that $`\alpha ^2=2`$. To show the shift in the weight is non-trivial. The shift in the weight was first obtained in , and we re-obtain it via a path-integral quantization in appendix B which makes the modern treatment in the paper  more precise. In mathematical terms, the shift is fairly obvious. Indeed, we can build irreducible representations of $`SU(2)`$ by quantizing appropriate orbits of $`SU(2)`$ with the canonical symplectic form (which we obtain from the decoupled particle action). We refer to  for a pedagogical discussion. In that formalism we find that the quantizable (co)adjoint orbits of $`SU(2)`$ are the two-spheres with radius $`r=\frac{n}{2}`$ where $`n`$ is a strictly positive integer, and that the spin of the representation is indeed related to the sphere of the radius as $`j=\frac{n}{2}\frac{1}{2}`$, thus accounting for all irreducible representations of $`SU(2)`$, including the trivial one, using quantizable orbits of maximal dimension two. Luckily this part of the story is readily extendable to $`SL(2,R)`$. Indeed, we can obtain all irreducible representations of $`SL(2,R)`$ that occur in the decomposition of the left regular representation by quantizing suitable adjoint orbits. First let us remind the reader of what these irreducible representations are.

### All unitary irreducible representations of $`SL(2,R)`$

We give a precise classification of all unitary irreducible representations of $`SL(2,R)`$ following  . The unitary irreps are:

* The continuous representations. There are two series of continuous representations and the series are labeled by the discrete parameter $`ϵ\{0,\frac{1}{2}\}`$ which indicates the parity of the representation. We denote them by $`C_{\frac{1}{2}+is}^ϵ`$ where $`s`$ is real and the quadratic Casimir $`c_2`$ takes the values $`c_2=\frac{1}{4}+s^2`$ (or $`c_2=\tau (\tau +1)`$ where $`\tau =\frac{1}{2}+is`$ in perhaps more familiar notation). These representations have a spectrum for a normalized elliptic generator $`J^{ell}=T^0`$ that is either all integers, for $`ϵ=0`$, or all half-integers, for $`ϵ=\frac{1}{2}`$. (See figure 1.)
* The true discrete representations. There are again two series, which are lowest weight representations and highest weight representations. These are denoted $`D_\tau ^+`$ or $`D_\tau ^{}`$ respectively. The index $`\tau `$ takes the values $`\tau \{1,\frac{3}{2},2,\mathrm{}\}`$, and the quadratic Casimir is again $`c_2=\tau (\tau +1)`$. The spectrum for the elliptic generator is given by $`\tau +n`$ where $`n`$ is a positive integer (or zero) for the $`D_\tau ^+`$ representation and $`\tau n`$ for the $`D_\tau ^{}`$ representation. (See figure 1.)
* The mock discrete representations. There are two of these, namely $`D_{\frac{1}{2}}^\pm `$ with spectra similar to the ones described for the true discrete series. (See figure 1.)
* The complementary representations. These have $`1<\tau <0`$ and $`\tau \frac{1}{2}`$. They are of even parity.

We make two remarks here. First of all, to the true discrete series with index $`\tau `$ there is naturally associated a finite dimensional non-unitary representation of dimension $`2\tau 1`$ with elliptic eigenvalues that lie between the eigenvalues of the two discrete representations . (See last column in figure 1.) The second remark is that the mock discrete series are the only discrete representations that naturally combine to form a continuous representation as is apparent from the spectrum for the elliptic generator.

Now, the left regular representation on quadratically integrable functions on the group manifold $`SL(2,R)`$ decomposes into true discrete representations, and both series of continuous representations (with a known Plancherel measure ). These representations only we should be able to obtain by quantizing suitable orbits .

The detailed proof of that statement is lengthy. We refer the reader to  and just summarize our intuition. First of all, let’s draw a picture of the orbits of $`SL(2,R)`$ (see figure 2). The structure of the orbits is easily understood when we realize that $`SL(2,R)`$ is isomorphic to the Lorentz group in three dimensions $`SO(2,1)`$.

We notice that the conjugacy classes of $`SL(2,R)`$ are of several kinds: a paraboloid above the $`(x^1,x^2)`$ plane, one below the $`(x^1,x^2)`$ plane, a hyperboloid associated with nearest approach to the $`x^0`$-axis, the point at the origin, and a future and past light-cone with the point at the origin removed. Note that the hyperboloid, as we move it towards the origin, when it reaches the origin splits into two light-cone sheets and evolves further into paraboloids.

The correspondence between orbits and representations goes as follows (see also ). The hyperboloids of radius $`s`$ correspond to two different continuous representations $`C_{\frac{1}{2}+is}^{0,\frac{1}{2}}`$ – we have two ways of quantizing each orbit. When we pass the hyperboloid through the origin, it splits into two paraboloids. Thereafter, the quantizable orbits are the paraboloids with half-integer radius $`r`$, which correspond to the discrete representations $`D_{\tau =r\frac{1}{2}}^+`$ and $`D_{\tau =r\frac{1}{2}}^{}`$ depending on whether we take the upper or the lower sheet.222We can think of the doublesheeted hyperboloid as splitting not only into two paraboloids, but also as obtaining radii which differ by a half-integer, since the spectrum of the discrete representations is also either half-integer or integer depending on the value of the radius. That completes the map of regular representations and quantizable orbits. (Note that the method of orbits gives good intuition for the spectrum of the elliptic operator in a representation associated to a given geometrical orbit. To convince oneself of this fact, the reader should merely try to match up figure 2 with figure 1, which is a useful mental exercise.)

But, from the geometrical picture of orbits, another representation theoretic fact becomes intuitive. The orbits corresponding to continuous representations split up into two light-cones plus the point at the origin when we let $`s`$ approach $`0`$. We thus gain intuition for the fact that the continuous representation with $`s=0`$ (and $`ϵ=1/2`$) decomposes as $`D_{\frac{1}{2}}^\pm `$, i.e. into two mock discrete representations.333 Moreover the gap that arises when we continue further, between the tips of the parabolas corresponding to the discrete representations $`D_\tau ^\pm `$ is a measure for the size of the non-unitary finite dimensional representations that is naturally associated to these discrete representations. We can picture a ball between the tip of the parabolas corresponding to the well-known spherical orbits of $`SU(2)`$ and their corresponding finite dimensional representations, after analytic continuation – if we really insist on a pictorial representation. Strictly speaking though, the mock discrete representations are not obtained by the orbit method, nor are the complementary representations.

### Conclusion

We take away from these intuitive mathematical facts the following statements about the quantization of a particle with an action determined by a weight in these orbits. When the particle has hyperbolic weight, the associated representation is continuous. When it has non-zero weight on the light-cone, the only invariant under conjugation is the overall sign of the weight. The sign determines whether the associated unitary Hilbert space is $`D_{\frac{1}{2}}^+`$ or $`D_{\frac{1}{2}}^{}`$. When the weight is zero, the representation is trivial. When the weight is elliptic, it is quantized, and the particle Hilbert space will be a discrete representation. (See table 1.) It would be useful to back up these statements with a path integral computation for a particle on an $`SL(2,R)`$ manifold, but we refrain from carrying out this exercise in this paper.

The complementary representations are not obtained by the orbit method. They lie in the far quantum regime of the particle action, since the radius of the orbit effectively acts like the particle action coupling constant . The complementary representations clearly are associated to small Casimirs. So, although we have no classical action starting point to study particles in complementary representations, since they are unitary we can accept them as quantum mechanical representation spaces. 444In an intuitive sense, these representations exactly appear to fill the hole left by the quantum shift in the classical weight.

In summary, by reviewing the orbit method for obtaining irreducible representations of $`SL(2,R)`$, we have hopefully convinced the reader of the fact that we are able to quantize the $`SL(2,R)`$ particle action. We have laid out the detailed map between classical weights in the action (4) and quantum particle Hilbert spaces (see table 1).

### Unitarity and current algebra

When we return to quantizing the full action, including the Chern-Simons term that gives rise to a chiral WZW model on the boundary, we run into subtleties. A naive quantization of the model will give rise to the usual representation of the current algebra on the irreducible representation of $`SL(2,R)`$. The model will be non-unitary, because of negative norm states arising from lowering operators associated to the elliptic one-parameter subgroup of $`SL(2,R)`$ (i.e. “the raising operators associated to the time-like direction”).

So, we can quantize a particle on $`SL(2,R)`$ by analogy to a particle on $`SU(2)`$ consistently. But, when we continue the analogy naively to include the action of the current algebra, we arrive at a non-unitary theory. We note at this stage that at least for a bulk without a boundary, there exists a quantization of Chern-Simons theory with non-compact gauge group which is unitary . It would be interesting to figure out whether there is a close analogue of the quantization for the theory on the disk, and if possible, to understand the relevant unitary representation of the current algebra. We will propose to solve the problem of unitarity in two different ways later on.

In passing we note that when we quantize strings on $`AdS_3\times S^3\times T^4`$, for example, then the non-unitarity of the representations of the $`SL(2,R)`$ loop group is not a problem after determining the right spectrum, since the ghosts decouple after applying the appropriate constraints (or after computing the BRST cohomology) .

Finally we make a remark on winding sectors. We have not been careful in treating the non-trivial topology of the gauge group with first homotopy group $`\mathrm{\Pi }_1(SL(2,R))=Z`$, since it was not crucial for our purposes until now. Later on, we will need the fact that the representation of the current algebra built on the discrete representations satisfies the following relation: $`\widehat{D}_{\frac{q}{2}}^{+,w}\widehat{D}_{\frac{q}{2}\frac{k}{2}}^{,w1}`$ which was proved in . We could derive it in the Chern-Simons theory by studying the transformation of the Hilbert space when we move from a sector with winding number $`w`$ to a sector with winding number $`w1`$.

## 4 Black holes and particle excitations

We have reminded ourselves of useful properties of $`SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons theory, and we will now bring them to bare on understanding three-dimensional gravity with a negative cosmological constant, with signature $`(1,+1,+1)`$, which can be rewritten as a $`SL(2,R)\times SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons theory as reviewed in section 2. In particular, we will be able to associate holonomies to classical gravity solutions, and we can thus associate them to punctures with particular $`SL(2,R)`$ representations in the Chern-Simons theory. We also clarify the role of the massless BTZ black hole solution, of the $`AdS_3`$ solution, and of the trivial Chern-Simons background.

Let’s study some classical solutions to the equations of motion with a source term. We restrict to the BTZ black hole solutions and compute the corresponding dreibein and spin connection, next to compute the holonomy of the classical gauge field around the source. That provides us with a map between classical sources and holonomies. Next, we can look at the quantum theory with the knowledge acquired in section 3.

To make contact with the usual metric formulation of three-dimensional gravity, we start out with the familiar BTZ metric:

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`\left(M+{\displaystyle \frac{r^2}{l^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{J^2}{4r^2}}\right)dt^2+\left(M+{\displaystyle \frac{r^2}{l^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{J^2}{4r^2}}\right)^1dr^2`$ (8)
$`+r^2\left(d\varphi {\displaystyle \frac{J}{2r^2}}dt\right)^2`$
where $`\varphi [0,2\pi [`$. The mass $`M`$ and angular momentum $`J`$ of the black hole are expressed in terms of the outer and inner horizon $`r_\pm `$ as $`M=\frac{r_+^2+r_{}^2}{l^2}`$ and $`J=\pm \frac{2r_+r_{}}{l}`$. The inner and outer horizon are then located at the (positive) square root of:

$`r_\pm ^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Ml^2}{2}}\left(1\pm \sqrt{1\left({\displaystyle \frac{J}{Ml}}\right)^2}\right).`$ (9)
We choose the following dreibein:

$`e^0`$ $`=`$ $`fdt`$
$`e^1`$ $`=`$ $`f^1dr`$
$`e^2`$ $`=`$ $`rd\varphi {\displaystyle \frac{J}{2r}}dt`$ (10)
where $`f^2=r^2/l^2M+J^2/(4r^2)`$. Labeling $`(t,r,\varphi )`$ tangent directions as $`(0,1,2)`$ respectively, we obtain the one-form:

$`\omega _{01}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r}{l^2}}dt{\displaystyle \frac{J}{2r}}d\varphi `$
$`\omega _{02}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{J}{2r^2}}f^1dr`$
$`\omega _{12}`$ $`=`$ $`fd\varphi .`$ (11)
From these we easily get the gauge potentials $`A^\pm `$, and see that those potentials satisfy our boundary conditions (5) at $`r=\mathrm{}`$: $`lA_t^\pm \pm A_\varphi ^\pm =0`$ holds for arbitrary $`r`$. We can compute the gauge invariant expectation value of a Wilson loop looping the origin, and we find :

$`Tr_Fe^{{\scriptscriptstyle A^\pm }}`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{cosh}\left(\pi \sqrt{M\pm {\displaystyle \frac{J}{l}}}\right).`$ (12)
Now we interpret the formula. First of all, it is clear that the non-trivial black hole solutions correspond to non-trivial source terms for the equations of motion. The holonomy is non-trivial when the field strength is sourced inside the (otherwise) topologically trivial Wilson loop. Thus, we can think of a spatial section of the BTZ space-time as a disk with a puncture where a source is inserted. That establishes the topology of a BTZ space-time.

Next, we notice that a generic BTZ black hole is associated to holonomies that are greater than two, i.e. they correspond to hyperbolic orbits. These orbits are naturally associated to continuous representations of both the left and right $`SL(2,R)`$ symmetry group. By comparing the holonomy that we calculated this way to the source term in the coupled Chern-Simons and particle action, we can associate the weight $`\frac{2\pi }{k}\lambda ^\pm =2\pi \sqrt{M\pm J/l}T_2`$ or $`\lambda ^\pm =k\sqrt{M\pm J/l}T_2`$ to a black hole with mass $`M`$ and angular momentum $`J`$. It is thus associated to a continuous representation with values $`s^\pm =\frac{k}{2}\sqrt{M\pm J/l}`$.

Next, we analytically continue the formula for the holonomies to negative $`M\pm J`$ and find:

$`Tr_Fe^{{\scriptscriptstyle A^\pm }}`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{cos}\left(\pi \sqrt{M{\displaystyle \frac{J}{l}}}\right).`$ (13)
Following the same reasoning as before, we find the relevant weight for the quantum Hilbert space: $`\lambda ^\pm =k\sqrt{MJ/l}T_0`$. We know that when we study the true $`SL(2,R)`$ group (and not its covering), the value of $`\lambda `$ is quantized as $`\lambda ^\pm =\pm (q+1)T_0=k\sqrt{M\pm J/l}T_0(q2)`$. We thus find that we can only quantize space-times with $`k\sqrt{M\pm J/l}=q1`$ in that Chern-Simons theory. We notice for instance that the $`AdS_3`$ geometry (– not the covering –) with $`J=0`$ and $`M=1`$ is only quantizable when $`k`$ is an integer. This is one way to realize that integer $`k`$ do play a special role in the $`SL(2,R)`$ theory.555 We note in passing that other even more indirect ways to realize the special role of integer levels is by noticing the spectral flow relation, by identifying the level of the $`SL(2,R)`$ theory with quantized charges in string theory, or by trying to combine an $`SL(2,R)`$ WZW model with a compact WZW model to obtain a supersymmetric theory.

Now we address a more subtle point. We notice that a light-cone value for the holonomy, after taking the trace, always gives rise to the trivial value (i.e. two) for the Wilson line. Nevertheless, we know that we can have non-trivial source terms in the classical equation of motion which correspond to light-cone weights. And we know that this statement is gauge invariant (since the light-cones are invariant under Lorentz transformations). Thus, for $`M=0=J`$, we have a special situation, with trivial value for the Wilson loop, but with three different classes of gauge fields which are gauge inequivalent. One class is the trivial gauge connection, associated to the trivial representation. This corresponds to the unbroken vacuum of the Chern-Simons theory. The massless BTZ black hole is non-trivial, and can be associated to the $`D_{\frac{1}{2}}^+`$ representation, while the massless BTZ black hole with negative values for the radial variable $`r`$ can be associated to $`D_{\frac{1}{2}}^{}`$. We note that this is not unexpected in view of the fact that on the Poincare patch (AdS) time flows in opposite directions when we continue through $`r=0`$, and this is reflected in the fact that the spectrum for the elliptic operator flips sign. (Of course, a lot of these properties are foreshadowed in the non-trivial geometry of the three-dimensional black hole .)

An extremal black hole corresponds to a Wilson loop that is trivial (in the sense that it is equal to the Wilson loop of a gauge field that is zero) in either the left or the right sector. It is then associated to a product of a continuous representation and a trivial, or a $`D_{\frac{1}{2}}^\pm `$ representation, depending on the precise choice of the sign of the associated light-cone weight.

We might also want to study complementary representations of $`SL(2,R)`$, i.e. the only remaining unitary representations. These representations can be suitably combined, leading presumably to particle like excitations in $`AdS_3`$ (with non-trivial mass and spin). It would be interesting to further study the possible geometric interpretations of more general combinations of $`SL(2,R)\times SL(2,R)`$ representations. We only note at this point that if we combine complementary or discrete with continuous representations, we violate the bound $`|M||J|`$.

### Gravitational BPS bound

Let us digress at this point and discuss the gravitational BPS-like bound. We can think of the bound $`|M||J|`$ as a BPS bound arising from a supersymmetric version of the Chern-Simons theory that we are studying (see e.g. ). Note that we actually should be able to study the quantized theory in this context, and to derive the bound from the action of quantum supercharges on a Hilbert space, in analogy to the derivation in supersymmetric field theory. Imagine we can derive this bound in the quantum theory (for instance by studying the representation theory of the boundary superconformal algebra). Then, it turns out that the quantum gravitational BPS bound is classically interpreted for the BTZ black holes (with $`M0`$) as the condition for absence of a naked singularity, while for $`M<0`$, it is interpreted as implying the absence of closed time-like curves. Thus, in the classical bosonic theory the BPS bound arises from physical considerations, while in the supersymmetric quantum theory, we imagine it arising through representation theory. Working out precisely these conceptual connections in the quantum theory will be worthwhile.

## 5 BTZ entropy I

In this section, we refine the picture described above, and we try to compute the BTZ entropy in the non-unitary theory of quantum gravity described in the previous sections. After analyzing in detail why the computation fails, we formulate a new proposal for a unitary boundary conformal field theory in the next section. However, we will find that unitarity seems to overconstrain the black hole counting problem.

We attempt to compute the BTZ entropy as follows. First, we need to identify which states in Chern-Simons theory on a disk with a source correspond to a BTZ black hole. The generator of time translations $`L_0+\overline{L}_0`$ in the boundary theory is the Hamiltonian, and determines the mass of the full system (including boundary excitations), which we will identify with the mass of the space-time. Similarly, $`L_0\overline{L}_0`$ corresponds to the total angular momentum. Properly normalizing the Sugawara energy momentum yields (in the semi-classical limit):

$`L_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k2}}:J_n^aJ_{a,n}:={\displaystyle \frac{1}{16G}}(lM+J)`$
$`\overline{L}_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k2}}:\overline{J}_n^a\overline{J}_{a,n}:={\displaystyle \frac{1}{16G}}(lMJ).`$ (14)
It is now easy to correct our statements in the previous sections. In section 4 we associated a particular mass and angular momentum to a primary state of the boundary conformal field theory. I.e. the boundary conformal field theory had no oscillator excitations turned on. When we turn on these excitations, we obtain states with a higher total mass. The total mass of the system should be identified as the mass of the space-time. (And analogously for the angular momentum.) Thus, there are many states, built on different ground states, which have the same total value for the mass. The idea behind the black hole entropy counting argument is that we count the number of states corresponding to a given total mass and angular momentum (and fixed topology). We will try to count these states in the semi-classical limit, where the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy formula is valid, i.e. in the limit $`l>>G`$ or $`k>>1`$. The formulas in this section should be understood to be valid in this limit only.

To be able to compute that number of states easily, we need a couple of non-trivial ingredients: the bare central charge, the minimal conformal dimension in the theory, and a modular invariant spectrum. The bare central charge of the theory is easy to determine: it is $`c=\frac{3k}{k2}`$. (For the connection to the standard result of  see .) The minimal conformal dimension in the theory depends on the spectrum of the theory, which we want to choose in a way consistent with modular invariance. A reasonable proposal for the spectrum seems to be to take the following current algebra representations in the Hilbert space :

$`\widehat{D}_{\frac{q}{2}}^{+,w}`$ $``$ $`\widehat{D}_{\frac{q}{2}}^{+,w}`$
$`\widehat{C}_{1/2+is}^{\alpha ,w}`$ $``$ $`\widehat{C}_{1/2+is}^{\alpha ,w}`$ (15)
where $`\frac{k1}{2}<\frac{q}{2}<\frac{1}{2}`$ and $`w`$ is a winding number that labels different sectors of the theory. We also need to specify a measure for the continuous representations which will not be crucial for our purposes. We will discuss subtleties associated to this choice of spectrum a little later.

Given the spectrum, we can determine the minimal conformal dimension and compute the effective central charge of the theory. In the zero winding sector, the minimal conformal dimension is (in the semi-classical limit) $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{min}^{w=0}=\frac{k}{4}`$, which would give an attractive central charge of $`c_{eff}=c24\mathrm{\Delta }_{min}=6k=\frac{3l}{2G}`$. In turn, that would lead, following the elegant argument of  to a swift derivation of the desired BTZ black hole entropy. Unfortunately, this story is not convincing for the following reasons.

### Critique

When we analyze the minimal conformal weight in the winding sectors, we find that the conformal weights are not bounded from below. That undermines fatally our first attempt. Note that there would be other valid critiques of the derivation.

One issue that we need to address is the precise modular invariant partition function of the $`SL(2,R)`$ Wess-Zumino-Witten theory. In fact, in the literature we find strong arguments for the proposed spectrum  (see also the important footnotes 5, 6 and 18 in ), we find the computation of the free energy of string theory on $`AdS_3\times N`$, which yields a modular invariant  result, and there is moreover an analysis of the factorization of four-point functions in the relevant analytically continued conformal field theory . But it seems that the modular invariant partition function has not been written down as a simple and clearcut formula (see also the footnote 2 in ). What does seem clear is that the winding sectors are crucial to obtain a modular invariant spectrum. That seems sufficiently devastating.

The second most striking shortcoming of our analysis (apart from the bottomless spectrum) is that the boundary theory is non-unitary because states with negative norm can be created by applying appropriate creation operators to primary states. (The representations for the zero-modes are unitary.) To mend this shortcoming, one could try to reproduce the argument in the unitary $`SL(2,C)/SU(2)`$ conformal field theory, and the associated Chern-Simons theory (see e.g. ), in other words, in a euclidean setting. The fact that the four-point functions of the euclidean conformal field theory  factorize over, amongst others, short string states (i.e. states in discrete representations) then could become an important part of completing the argument.

## 6 BTZ entropy II

We obtained a non-unitary boundary theory, where modular invariance of the boundary partition function forced a fatal result for the minimal conformal weight. In this section we propose a modified theory which is unitary, and has a clearcut modular invariant partition function with minimal conformal weight. We will show in detail why this modified theory also does not give rise to the right counting of degrees of freedom.

The argument runs as follows. To obtain a unitary theory, we have to get rid off the modes that give rise to negative norm states (at least). The minimal way to achieve this, for Chern-Simons theory on a disk, is to add a boundary coupling. We choose the boundary coupling to be an interaction term that includes a boundary gauge field that gauges the elliptic $`U(1)`$ subgroup of $`SL(2,R)`$ at the boundary. We thus leave the bulk gravitational theory intact, and modify the action by a boundary term only. The resulting boundary model will be the coset two-dimensional conformal field theory $`SL(2,R)/U(1)`$. The resulting gravitational theory has a space-time Hamiltonian which is the coset conformal field theory Hamiltonian (since that is the operator that generates time translations), and a similar reasoning holds once again for the angular momentum. We obtain:

$`L_0^{cs}`$ $`=`$ $`L_0^{SL(2,R)}L_0^{U(1)}={\displaystyle \frac{k}{4}}\left(M+{\displaystyle \frac{J}{l}}\right)`$
$`\overline{L}_0^{cs}`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{L}_0^{SL(2,R)}\overline{L}_0^{U(1)}={\displaystyle \frac{k}{4}}\left(M{\displaystyle \frac{J}{l}}\right)`$
where the allowed states are the ones with $`J_n^\pm `$ excitations and with $`J_0^0\overline{J}_0^0=n`$ and $`J_0^0+\overline{J}_0^0=kw`$. The numbers $`n`$ and $`w`$ are $`U(1)`$ charges under the unbroken $`U(1)`$ subgroups of $`SL(2,R)\times SL(2,R)`$, and in the context of the cigar CFT they are associated to non-trivial winding and momentum in the angular direction .

Let us discuss a few aspects of our proposal for a modified, unitary theory. The truncation of the boundary theory might seem arbitrary. We argue that it is the minimal truncation that preserves unitarity. The original theory in fact contains ghosts and can intuitively be argued to have too many states to obtain the correct entropy law. The truncation we proposed above is the one that precisely only gets rid of the states responsible for non-unitarity. At the same time, we note that the requirement of a precise modular invariant partition function and spectrum also constitute an argument for the proposed truncation. If we desire the boundary conformal field theory to be consistent, a spectrum giving rise to modular invariance seems imperative.

The truncation moreover seems to interfere with perhaps desirable gluing properties of Chern-Simons theory. It may be thus useful to remark that our truncation may be achieved in another manner. We could include in our action a bulk Chern-Simons $`U(1)\times U(1)`$ action, and include a ghost boundary term, and moreover demand that our boundary states are in a given BRST cohomology (see ). That will lead, in the particular example of the theory on the disk to the same boundary action and boundary theory. The decoupled bulk equations still allow for the standard gravity solutions.

But, in any case, the truncation gives rise to a special role for the $`U(1)\times U(1)`$ symmetry that we gauged. In fact, we are left with only a $`U(1)\times U(1)`$ symmetry (which conformal field theorists may think off as associated to the angular direction of the semi-infinite cigar or two-dimensional black hole) which in our context is the charge of two components of the dreibein or of the spin connection under a rigid rotation. The assignment of these charges and their incorporation in the spectrum are crucial for modular invariance. The fact that our fundamental variables are the dreibein and the spin connection is thus important. (In this respect, our formalism is reminiscent of loop quantum gravity.)

We note also that the demand of modular invariance incorporates other non-trivial information (compare e.g. to ) as seen below. It implies that the two chiral sectors of the theory are linked. Although the two sectors are already related by the demand of quantization of space-time angular momentum, our insistence on a modular invariant spectrum also locks the zero-modes of the two chiral sectors, and chooses to combine the left and right spectrum in a very particular way.

Now let us compute the black hole entropy in this unitary theory. In this theory the argument for black hole state counting can be made precise, but it does not lead to the expected result. The bare central charge is $`c=\frac{3k}{k2}1`$, and the spectrum of states needed for an explicitly modular invariant partition function is given by :

$`\widehat{D}_{\frac{q}{2}}^+`$ $``$ $`\widehat{D}_{\frac{q}{2}}^+`$
$`\widehat{C}_{1/2+is}^ϵ`$ $``$ $`\widehat{C}_{1/2+is}^ϵ`$ (16)
where $`\frac{k1}{2}<\frac{q}{2}<\frac{1}{2}`$ and $`J_0^0`$ and $`\overline{J}_0^0`$ satisfy the constraints $`J_0^0\overline{J}_0^0=n`$ and $`J_0^0+\overline{J}_0^0=kw`$. The conformal weights of the primaries are given by:

$`h_{primary}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q(q2)}{4(k2)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{(nkw)^2}{4k}}`$
$`\overline{h}_{primary}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q(q2)}{4(k2)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{(n+kw)^2}{4k}}.`$ (17)
Here we see explicitly that the space-time angular momentum is quantized. To determine the minimal conformal weight, we need to take into account the spectrum of the elliptic generator in the discrete lowest weight representations (as discussed in section 3), and we find that the $`U(1)`$ contribution to the conformal weight (i.e. the second term in formula (17)) forces a minimal conformal weight that is positive, consistent with the unitarity of the cigar conformal field theory.666We thank Juan Maldacena for pointing out a crucial oversight on this point in the original version of our paper which lead to a faulty conclusion. The effective central charge is then too small to be able to account for the expected black hole entropy.

In summary, we analyzed in detail two proposals for boundary conformal field theories, and showed that both in the non-unitary theory and in the unitary theory, the demand of modular invariance for the boundary partition function forced a fatal result for the effective central charge. It seems that even a minimal unitary truncation of the unitary theory does not allow for a sufficient number of degrees of freedom to account for the black hole entropy. Indeed, in every unitary framework, the effective central charge will not be larger then the bare central charge. Although one would like to appeal to a negative conformal weight for an $`AdS_3`$ ground state to raise the effective central charge, that is difficult to reconcile with unitarity.

Some comments on our analysis are in order. Our analysis should be compared to those in the literature. (see e.g. ). For a critique of the approaches in  we refer to the paper . The main difference between these papers and ours is that we explicitly identify proposals for the dual conformal field theory, and the degrees of freedom that should be responsible for the black hole entropy.

There has been some discussion in the literature of what the relevant degrees of freedom are, and where they are located. In our theory they are clearly the degrees of freedom located at the boundary of the manifold (and associated to the punctures on the disk). The boundary can be viewed as asymptotic infinity, as it would in an approach as in , or as located on the horizon, as in . From our perspective, we need to identify the full system, both the punctured disk and the boundary degrees of freedom as describing a specific black hole state. The total mass of the system, which we identify with the black hole mass, is given by both contributions from the puncture (the weight of the primary) and the excitations at the boundary. From this viewpoint, it may perhaps be more natural to think of our system as describing the interior of a black hole, say the space beyond the event horizon. If these statements seem counterintuitive, we remark that all BTZ black hole entropy counting arguments in the literature share this property with our proposal.

We further remark that also in the framework of the metric formulation of three-dimensional gravity (with $`AdS_3`$ boundary conditions ), it may be difficult to account for the BTZ entropy. The connection between the gravity formulation and our unitary treatment can be established by studying the supergravity theory, with an ($`N=2`$) super-Liouville theory on the boundary , which is conjectured / proven  to be dual to the $`SL(2,R)/U(1)`$ supercoset model777See also .. Since the supercoset is expected to share the crucial features of the theory we studied, it may be equally difficult to compute the (standard) black hole entropy formula within this framework, since the effective central charge of the coset theory (or the Liouville theory) will not be sufficiently high.

## 7 Conclusions

We conclude our long discussion with a brief summary. In this paper, we have analyzed the Chern-Simons formulation of three-dimensional gravity. In particular, we have mapped out the Hilbert spaces for $`SL(2,R)`$ Chern-Simons theory associated with particular classical sources. We thereby clarified some of the vacuum structure of three-dimensional gravity with a negative cosmological constant, and we made a proposal for a concrete investigation of a quantum gravitational BPS bound. Moreover, we have analyzed in detail the boundary conformal field theories that arise in the non-unitary formulation, and in a minimal truncation that is unitary. We showed that the demand of a modular invariant partition function, and unitarity leaves little room for making the BTZ black hole counting argument precise in this context. It will be interesting to understand whether some consistency requirements can be relaxed or whether different topologies can be summed over, in order to find an explicit model for black hole entropy counting in this simple framework.

## 8 Acknowledgements

Thanks to all our colleagues at MIT for creating a stimulating physics environment. Our research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under cooperative research agreement # DE-FC02-94ER40818.

## Appendix A Conventions

### $`SL(2,R)`$

Our conventions for $`SL(2,R)`$ will be (where $`\sigma _i`$ denote the Pauli spin matrices):

$`T_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(i)\sigma _2`$
$`T_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\sigma _3`$
$`T_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\sigma _1`$
$`[T_a,T_b]`$ $`=`$ $`f_{ab}^{}{}_{}{}^{c}T_c`$
$`Tr(T_aT_b)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\eta _{ab}`$
$`\eta _{ab}`$ $`=`$ $`(1,+1,+1)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}f_{}^{c}{}_{ad}{}^{}f_{}^{d}{}_{bc}{}^{}`$
$`f_{012}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{012}=1`$ (18)
### Gravity

We define the spin connection and the curvature two-form:

$`\omega _{\mu ab}`$ $`=`$ $`(e_a)^\nu _\mu (e_b)_\nu `$
$`\omega _{ab}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{abc}\omega ^c`$
$`R_{ab}`$ $`=`$ $`d\omega _{ab}+\omega _{ac}\omega _{}^{c}{}_{b}{}^{}`$ (19)
We have the useful formula:

$`ϵ^{abc}R_{bc}`$ $`=`$ $`2d\omega ^a+ϵ^{abc}\omega _b\omega _c.`$ (20)
## Appendix B Shifting the weight

In this appendix, we review the quantization of orbits of $`SU(2)`$. We quantize a point-particle action for a particle moving on a quantizable orbit. In this section we closely follow , but our analysis differs in details, and most importantly, yields a slightly different result: the classical weight appearing in the action is the weight of the quantum Hilbert space, shifted by half the positive root. Technically, the difference in our approach lies in a more natural regularization scheme. In fact, the treatment in  is precise on this point, but we believe it worthwhile to re-derive the shift in the weight in a more fluent fashion and in the perhaps more familiar formalism of .

We take over most of the conventions of , and choose the symplectic form on the orbit to be

$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ $`=`$ $`iTr(m\sigma ^3dgg^1dgg^1).`$ (21)
When we parametrize the group manifold by Euler angles as $`g=e^{i\psi \frac{\sigma ^3}{2}}e^{i\theta \frac{\sigma ^2}{2}}e^{i\varphi \frac{\sigma ^3}{2}}`$, we can take the angles to be in the range $`\varphi [0,2\pi [`$, $`\theta [0,\pi ]`$ and $`\psi [2\pi ,2\pi [`$. The symplectic form $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ can then be rewritten as:

$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ $`=`$ $`d(m\mathrm{cos}\theta )d\varphi =m\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\varphi =d\omega .`$ (22)
We can then use the differential form $`\omega `$ to define our particle action:888The normalizations we use in the bulk of the paper for the particle action then corresponds to identifying $`\lambda =m\sigma ^3`$ and $`m`$ is half-integer.

$`S_p`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle m\mathrm{cos}\theta d\varphi }.`$ (23)
We concentrate on computing the trace of the operator $`O=e^{m\mathrm{cos}\theta T}`$ by performing the path integral with periodic boundary conditions, and integrating over the boundary conditions, while adding the exponent of the operator $`O`$ to the action  to obtain:

$`S_{p+O}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^T}(m\dot{\varphi }m)\mathrm{cos}\theta dt.`$ (24)
We then perform the path integral over the variables $`\eta (t)=\mathrm{cos}\theta [1,1]`$ and $`\varphi (t)]\mathrm{},+\mathrm{}[`$ with the appropriate measure. The only subtle point is that the variable $`\varphi `$ is in fact periodic, such that we have periodic boundary conditions that include an integer winding $`wZ`$:

$`\varphi (0)`$ $`=`$ $`\varphi _i`$
$`\varphi (T)`$ $`=`$ $`\varphi _i+2\pi w.`$
Our path integral thus should incorporate a sum over winding sectors, and we can attribute a phase $`e^{2\pi iw\alpha }`$ to each winding sector (where $`\alpha `$ has the interpretation of a periodic $`\theta `$-angle taking values in $`[0,1[`$). Now, the only nontrivial part of the path integral is the one over the zero-mode $`\eta _0`$ of $`\eta `$, and the sum over the winding sectors. Following  we obtain the trace for the operator $`O`$:

$`Tr(e^{im\mathrm{cos}\theta T})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{w=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle _1^1}𝑑\eta _0e^{2\pi i(m\eta _0+\alpha )wim\eta _0T}.`$ (25)
We use the formula:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{w}{}}e^{2\pi i(m\eta _0+\alpha )w}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\delta ((m\eta _0+\alpha )k)`$ (26)
to perform the sum over the topological sectors. Now, we have arrived at the essential technical point where we differ from . It is clear, by using the regularization provided by the angle $`\alpha `$, that we find contributions to the trace from precisely $`2m`$ integers $`k`$ (and not from $`2m+1`$ integers). At this point we do need to distinguish between integer and half-integer values for $`k`$, and we find that the trace of the operator is given for integer $`m`$ by:

$`Tr(e^{im\mathrm{cos}\theta T})`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\alpha T\frac{i}{2}T}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(mT)}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{1}{2}T}}`$ (27)
and for half-integer $`m`$ by:

$`Tr(e^{im\mathrm{cos}\theta T})`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\alpha T}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(mT)}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{1}{2}T}}`$ (28)
The most important and simple fact we take away from our analysis is that for a given $`m`$ we thus obtain a representation space of dimension $`2m`$ after quantization. In other words, the relation between the spin $`j`$ of the representation and the weight of the orbit $`m`$ is given by $`2m=2j+1`$, or $`m=j+\frac{1}{2}`$. Thus, the weight $`m`$ associated to the orbit is the weight $`j`$ associated to the quantum Hilbert space shifted by half the sum of the positive roots (which in our conventions for $`SU(2)`$ is $`\frac{1}{2}`$). It should be clear at this stage, and from the analysis in  that we can obtain generic matrix elements of any operator by specifying particular initial and final conditions and performing the path integral.


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# Optimal Weak Lensing Skewness Measurements

## 1 Introduction

Mapping the mass distribution of matter in the Universe has been a major challenge and focus of modern observational cosmology. The only direct procedure to weigh the matter in the universe is by using the deflection of light by gravity. While this effect is very small, a large statistical sample can provide a precise measurement of averaged quantities.

There are very few direct ways to weigh the universe. The most accurate measurement by combining CMB data with large scale structure (Spergel et al., 2003; Contaldi et al., 2003) results in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m0.27`$ with zero geometric curvature implying a cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.73`$. This type of inference requires combining data measured at different times and on different length scales. Blanchard et al. (2003) have shown that the same data can be consistent with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1`$ if one gives up perfect scale invariance for the primordial perturbations and allows for a neutrino mass of 1eV. The physical constraint arises since the CMB measures the fluctuations on large scales $`L`$Gpc at high redshift $`z1100`$. The large-scale structure measures scales of $`L1100`$ Mpc and a low redshift of $`z0`$. The scales only have a small overlap (Tegmark & Zaldarriaga, 2002). If one requires perfect scale invariance of the fluctuations, one is forced into a low matter density with a cosmological constant. It is perhaps an aesthetic choice to trade scale invariance in time to scale invariance in space.

Weak gravitational lensing provides a direct statistical measure of the dark matter distribution regardless of the nature and dynamics of both the dark and luminous matter intervening between the distant sources and observer. Weak lensing by large-scale structure can lead to the shear and magnification of the images of distant faint galaxies. Based on the theoretical work done by Gunn (1967), Blandford et al. (1991), Miralda-Escude (1991) and Kaiser (1992) performed the first calculation of weak lensing by large-scale structure, the result of which showed the expected distortion amplitude of weak lensing effect is at a level of roughly a few percent in adiabatic cold dark matter models. Kaiser (1992) also made early predictions for the power spectrum of the shear and convergence using linear perturbation theory. Due to the weakness of the effect, all detections have been statistical in nature, primarily in regimes where the signal-to-noise is less than unity. Fortunately, several groups have been able to measure this weak gravitational lensing effect (Bacon et al., 2000; Refregier et al., 2002; Hoekstra et al., 2002; Van Waerbeke et al., 2002; Jarvis et al., 2002; Brown et al., 2002; Hamana et al., 2002)recently.

In the standard model of cosmology, fluctuations start off small, symmetric and Gaussian. Even in some non-Gaussian models like topological defects, initial fluctuations are still symmetric: positive and negative fluctuations occur with equal probability (Pen et al., 1994). As fluctuations grow by gravitational instability, this symmetry can no longer be maintained - over densities can be arbitrarily large, while under dense regions can never have less than zero mass. This leads to a skewness in the distribution of matter fluctuations. While skewness has already been measured at very high statistical significance (Pen et al., 2003), the measurement has not resulted in a strong constraint on the total matter density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. The data has so far been limited by sample variance and analysis techniques. Currently ongoing surveys, such as the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope(hereafter CFHT) Legacy Survey, will provide more than an order of magnitude improvement in the statistics. In this paper, we address the optimal analysis of the new data sets and examine the likely plausible accuracies on the direct measurements of matter density that they can achieve. The calculations rely only on sub-horizon Newtonian physics.

Several studies have addressed the feasibility of the skewness measurements (Jain et al., 2000; White & Hu, 2000). These pioneering contributions provided the first estimates of the expected strengths of the skewness $`S_3`$. A real measurement is limited by the sample variance in $`S_3`$ and noise properties. Furthermore, the density field is always smoothed by some filters. Since gravitational lensing can only measure differences in mass, all such filters must have zero area. In this paper we study a range of filters that have been suggested in the literature. Our goal is to find the optimal scale for each filter, i.e. the scale that maximizes the dependence on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. We study the filters that have been mainly employed in the literature: top-hat, Gaussian, Wiener, aperture and compensated Gaussian. Only the last three have zero area, and can be applied to real data. For completeness, we also compare the first two filters, on which much of the literature is based.

In second order perturbation theory, one finds that the skewness scales as the square of the variance and inversely to density. In terms of the dimensionless surface density $`\kappa `$, one can express the square of the variance and the skewness as respectively $`\overline{\kappa }^2^{1/2}\sigma _8\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{0.75}`$ and $`S_3\frac{\overline{\kappa }^3}{\overline{\kappa }^2^2}\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{0.8}`$. Therefore, one can break the degeneracy between $`\sigma _8`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ if only both the variance and the skewness of the convergence are measured. The skewness of the convergence field has been studied in perturbation theory (Bernardeau et al., 1997; Hui, 1999) and initial detections have been reported (Bernardeau et al., 2002). Jain et al. (2000) investigate weak lensing by large-scale structure using ray tracing in N-body simulations. By smoothing the convergence field using a top-hat window function, they compute $`S_3`$ under two conditions - one with noise and one without noise added in the convergence fields by the third moment for all varieties of cosmological models. Moments are linear in the PDF: one can combine the moments of different maps, which gives the same answer as combining maps first. Non-linear methods have also been proposed. One can measure $`S_3`$ is using the conditional second moment of the $`\kappa `$ field, specifically, the second moment of positive $`\kappa `$ and negative $`\kappa `$, which is related to $`S_3`$ in perturbation theory (Nusser & Dekel, 1993; Juszkiewicz et al., 1995).

Moments are also additive in the presence of noise, such that skewness-free noise (which realistic symmetric noise sources often have) does not bias the measurement of moments.

White & Hu (2000) presented a calculation for the skewness $`S_3`$ and its standard deviation of weak lensing by large scale-scale structure based on N-body simulations. By smoothing the $`\kappa `$ field using a top-hat filter, they show that the standard deviation of the skewness after adding simulated shot noise to the $`\kappa `$ field are only slightly increased by about 16 per cent compared with the case of pure $`\kappa `$ field.

In this paper, we present the first extended comparison of skewness for simulated weak lensing using different kinds of window functions to isolate the filter that is optimal for distinguishing cosmological models. We highlight some candidate window functions that have been used separately in the literature. The outline of the paper is as follows. In §2, we introduce the strategy of map construction of weak lensing from simulations. In §3, we describe the detail of window functions employed and present the results and summarize our conclusions in Section 4.

## 2 Simulations and map construction of weak lensing

### 2.1 N-body simulation

We ran a series of N-body simulations with different values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ to generate convergence maps and make simulated catalogs to calibrate the observational data and estimate errors in the analysis. The power spectra for given parameters were generated using CMBFAST (Seljak & Zaldarriaga, 1996) and these tabulated functions were used to generate initial conditions. The power spectra were normalized to be consistent with the earlier two point analysis from this data set (Van Waerbeke et al., 2002). We ran all of the simulations using a parallel, Particle-mesh N-body code (Dubinski, J., Kim, J., Park, C. 2003) at $`1024^3`$ mesh resolution using $`512^3`$ particles on an 8 node quad processor Itanium Beowulf cluster at CITA. Output times were determined by the appropriate tiling of the light cone volume with joined co-moving boxes from $`z6`$ to $`z=0`$. We output periodic surface density maps at $`2048^2`$ resolution along the 3 independent directions of the cube at each output interval. These maps represent the raw output for the run and are used to generate convergence maps in the thin lens and Born approximations by stacking the images with the appropriate weights through the comoving volume contained in the past light cone.

All simulations started at an initial redshift $`z_i=50`$, and ran for 1000 steps in equal expansion factor ratios with box size $`L=200h^1`$ Mpc comoving. We adopted a Hubble constant $`h=0.7`$ and a scale invariant $`n=1`$ initial power spectrum. A flat cosmological model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m+\mathrm{\Lambda }=1`$ was used. Four models were run, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ of 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 1. The power spectrum normalization $`\sigma _8`$ was chosen as 1.16, 0.90, 0.82 and 0.57 respectively.

### 2.2 Simulated Convergence Maps

The convergence $`\kappa `$ is the projection of the matter over-density $`\delta `$ along the line of sight $`\theta `$ weighted by the lensing geometry and source galaxy distribution. It can be expressed as

$$\kappa (\theta ,\chi _s)=_0^{\chi _s}W(\chi )\delta (\chi ,r(\chi )\theta ))d\chi ,$$
(1)
where, $`\chi `$ is the comoving distance in unit of $`c/H_0`$, and $`H_0=100h\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}/\mathrm{Mpc}`$. The weight function $`W(\chi )`$ is

$$W(\chi )=\frac{3}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }_mg(\chi )(1+z)$$
(2)
determined by the source galaxy distribution function $`n(z)`$ and the lensing geometry.

$$g(\chi )=r(\chi )_\chi ^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\chi ^{}n(\chi ^{})\frac{r(\chi ^{}\chi )}{r(\chi ^{})}.$$
(3)
$`r(\chi )`$ is the radial coordinate. $`r(\chi )=\mathrm{sinh}(\chi )`$ for open, $`r(\chi )=\chi `$ for flat and $`r(\chi )=\mathrm{sin}(\chi )`$ for closed geometry of Universe. $`n(z)=n(\chi )d\chi /dz`$ is normalized such that $`_0^{\mathrm{}}n(z)𝑑z=1`$. For the CFHT Legacy Survey, we adopt $`n(z)=\frac{\beta }{z_0\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1+\alpha }{\beta })}(\frac{z}{z_0})^\alpha \mathrm{exp}((\frac{z}{z_0})^\beta )`$ with $`\alpha =2`$ and $`\beta =1.2`$ and the source redshift parameter $`z_0=0.44`$, which peaks at $`z_p=1.58z_0`$, respectively. The mean redshift is $`\overline{z}=2.1z_0`$ and the median redshift is $`z_h=1.9z_0`$(Van Waerbeke et al., 2002). The source redshift distribution $`n(z)`$ adopted here is the same as that for VIRMOS.

During each simulation we store 2D projections of $`\delta `$ through the 3D box at every light crossing time through the box along all x, y and z directions. Our 2D surface density sectional maps are stored on $`2048^2`$ grids. After the simulation, we stack sectional maps separated by a width of the simulation box, randomly choosing the center of each section and randomly rotating and flipping each section. The periodic boundary condition guarantees that there is no discontinuities between any two adjacent boxes. We then add these sections with the weights given by $`W(z)`$ onto a map of constant angular size, which is generally determined by the maximum projection redshift. To minimize the repetition of the same structures in the projection, we alternatively choose the sectional maps of x, y, z directions during the stacking. Using different random seeds for the alignments and rotations, we make $`40`$ maps for each cosmological model. Since the galaxy distribution peaks at $`z1`$, the peak contribution of lensing comes from $`z0.5`$ due to the lensing geometry term. Thus the maximum projection redshift $`z2`$ is sufficient for the lensing analysis. So we project the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1,0.4,0.3`$ simulations to $`z=2`$ and obtain $`40`$ maps each with angular width $`\theta _\kappa =4.09,3.18`$ and $`3.02`$ degrees, respectively. To make sufficiently large maps, for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.2`$, we project up to $`z=1.8`$ and obtain maps with angular width $`\theta _\kappa =2.86`$ degrees. One $`\kappa `$ map created from a cosmological simulation of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=`$0.3 is shown in Fig.1. The skewness is quite apparent at this resolution of the simulation. Decreasing the cosmological density while maintaining the same variance of convergence $`\kappa `$ forces structures to be more non-linear, and thus more skewed. Our challenge is to extract this behavior accurately from realistic data.

We then simulate the CFHT Legacy Survey by adding noise to these clean maps. The noise $`\kappa `$ maps have a pixel-pixel variance $`\sigma _N^2=e^2/2/N_{\mathrm{pixel}}`$. Here $`e^2=0.47^2`$ is the total noise estimated in the VIRMOS-DESCART survey and here we take it as what would be expected by the CFHT Legacy Survey. It includes the dispersion of the galaxy intrinsic ellipticity, PSF correction noise and photon shot noise. $`N_{\mathrm{pixel}}`$ is the mean number of galaxies in each pixel. For VIRMOS, the number density of observed galaxies $`n_g26/\mathrm{arcmin}^2`$, then $`N_{\mathrm{pixel}}=n_g[(\theta _\kappa /1^{^{}})/N]^2`$, where $`N=2048`$ is the number of grids by which we store 2D maps and the field of view $`\theta _\kappa `$ is in units of arc min. The factor of 2 arises from the fact that the shear field has two degrees of freedom ($`\gamma _1,\gamma _2`$), where the definition of $`e^2`$ sums over both. We use this as our best guess for the CFHT Legacy Survey noise. The maps we obtained through the method described above are non-periodic after the projection. In order to eliminate edge effects, we crop each smoothed map by a factor of $`10\%`$ in the margins of each $`\kappa `$ map for model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.2`$. For comparison, the size of maps for other models is the same as that of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.2`$.

## 3 The optimal filter

Our goal is to find the optimal filter for constraining $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ by the non-Gaussianity of weak lensing. The non-Gaussianity of weak lensing for a clean map is quantified by the skewness $`S_3`$

$$S_3(\theta _f)=\frac{\kappa ^3}{\kappa ^2^2},$$
(4)
where $`\theta _f`$ is the characteristic radius of the filter function. When noise is present, the definition of skewness can be modified to be (White & Hu (2000))

$$S_3(\theta _f)=\frac{\kappa _{\mathrm{S}+\mathrm{N}}^3}{[\kappa _{\mathrm{S}+\mathrm{N}}^2^2\kappa _N^2]^2}.$$
(5)
The subscript $`S`$ indicates a weak lensing signal while $`N`$ denotes random noise. Since $`\kappa _{\mathrm{S}+\mathrm{N}}^3=\kappa _\mathrm{S}^3`$, $`\kappa _{\mathrm{S}+\mathrm{N}}^2\kappa _\mathrm{N}^2=\kappa _\mathrm{S}^2`$, thus $`S_3`$ defined by Eq.5 is statistically equivalent to the one defined by Eq.4, and the presence of noise has only residual effects on the dispersion of $`S_3`$.

The skewness $`S_3`$ is a function of cosmological density parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and the filter function. The noise introduces a large dispersion in $`S_3`$ and also smears its intrinsic dependence on cosmological parameters. Filtering on a large scale reduces this noise, but also reduces the intrinsic skewness, and increases sample variance. Our goal is to find the optimal smoothing scale. Different filters also have different scale dependence,. The general form of this filter is hard to find, so we will employ five parametrized classes of filters in this paper. They are the top-hat (hereafter,TH), Gaussian (GS), aperture (AP), compensated Gaussian (CG) and Wiener (WN) filters, respectively. TH is normalized to have a sum unity in the 2D window function map, and GS is defined as $`W(\theta )=(1/2\pi \theta _f^2)\mathrm{exp}(\frac{\theta ^2}{2\theta _f^2})`$ which is normalized by the same as TH. AP is defined as $`W(\theta )=\frac{9}{\pi }(\frac{1}{\theta _f})^2[1(\frac{\theta }{\theta _f})^2][1/3(\frac{\theta }{\theta _f})^2]`$ and zero for $`\theta >\theta _f`$, which has zero mean. The CG filter is written as $`W(\theta )=\frac{1}{2\pi \theta _f^2}\left(1\frac{\theta ^2}{2\theta _f^2}\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\theta ^2}{2\theta _f^2}+1\right)`$, which holds zero area, and is normalized to have a peak amplitude of unity in Fourier space. This has the feature that it will only damp modes, and never amplify. Many analytic integrals for CG can be evaluated analytically (Crittenden et al., 2002). WN is defined in Fourier space by $`W(l)=\frac{C_s(l)}{C_s(l)+C_n}`$, where $`C_s(l)`$ is the angular power spectrum of the signal $`\kappa `$, while $`C_n=\frac{4\pi \sigma _N^2f_{sky}}{N^2}`$ is that for noise power, and $`f_{sky}=\pi (\frac{\theta _\kappa }{360})^2`$ is the fractional sky coverage of each map.

Given these filters, one can measure $`S_3`$ and its dispersion $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$, which are all functions of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ causes the inferred $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ to differ from its true value by a change of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. For each class of filter, there exists an optimal filter radius $`\theta _f`$ to minimize $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. Comparing the minimum $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ of each class of filter, one can then find the optimal one.

From simulated maps, we first calculate the skewness $`S_3`$ and its standard deviation $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ with different filter radius for all kinds of cosmological models. The CFHT Legacy Survey will observe 160 square degrees, which is about 24 times larger than the simulated area. We conservatively decreased the error we obtained in the field-to-field variations by a factor of about 4 to estimate the sensitivity for the Legacy Survey. Therefore, the standard deviation of $`S_3`$ throughout this paper is taken to be one fourth of original predicted value from simulation. The skewness $`S_3`$ and its standard deviation $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ of TH, GS, AP and CG window functions are shown in Fig.2 and 3, while that of WN filter are plotted in Fig.4. From Fig.2 and 4, it is shown that the expected $`S_3`$ decrease with the cosmological density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ for all of filters, which is in consistent with that predicted by perturbation theory at large $`\theta _f`$ (Gaztanaga & Bernardeau, 1998) and non-linear perturbation theory (Hui, 1999; Van Waerbeke et al., 2001). A fixed fluctuation amplitude measured by weak lensing is a smaller fractional fluctuation in a higher $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ universe, and thus less non-linear and less non-Gaussian. $`S_3`$ also decreases with filter scale $`\theta _f`$, as one would expect from the central limit theorem when smoothing over more independent patches to converge to a Gaussian distribution. Our dependence of $`S_3`$ agrees qualitatively with Van Waerbeke et al. (2001), where the detailed normalization depends on details of the redshift distribution. Estimates of $`S_3`$ are possible analytically. To optimize its measurement, we also need its standard deviation, which is related to a six point function. This is difficult to compute analytically.

The fit for $`S_3`$ in Fig.2 fails badly on not only small scale but large scales of more than 10 arc minutes. This is due to larger standard deviation of $`S_3`$ as shown in Fig.3 on both of the two scales. It is also apparent from Fig.3 that there exists an optimal filtering scale $`\theta _f`$ corresponding which minimizes $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ (except for the WN filter that does not depend on filter radius). This is due to the trade-off between noise on small scales and sample variance on large scales. $`S_3`$ as a function of filter radius $`\theta _f`$ for the TH filter in Fig.2 is in rough agreement with that of White & Hu (2000) where cosmological model is specified to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, but it differs from Jain et al. (2000). We do not understand the behaviour of the Gaussian window for large $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at small angular scale, where a smoothing scale smaller than our resolution seems to be prefered. But we do not dwell on this since the Gaussian window is not observable on a shear map.

From the above analyses, it is clear that $`S_3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ depend not only on the smoothing scale $`\theta _f`$ but also the cosmological parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ for all window functions except for the WN filter. In real observations of weak lensing, one must evaluate the uncertainty in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ for a given observed $`S_3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ to discriminate between cosmological models. One needs to invert the relation $`S_3=S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f)`$ to obtain $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=\mathrm{\Omega }_m(S_3,\theta _f)`$ and estimate the uncertainty of inferred $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m(S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f),\theta _f)=\mathrm{\Omega }_m(S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f),\theta _f)\mathrm{\Omega }_m(S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f)+\mathrm{\Delta }S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f),\theta _f).$$
(6)
Because of the irregularity of the data points, the inversion is noisy and may introduce unrealistic artifacts. To overcome this problem, we first fit $`S_3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ by a combination of power laws of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and $`\theta _f`$ in the presence of noise, respectively

$$S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f)=A(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)\theta _f^{B(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)},$$
(7)
and

$$\mathrm{\Delta }S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f)=A_S(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)\theta _f^{B_S(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)}+A_N(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)\theta _f^{B_N(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)},$$
(8)
where $`A(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_1\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_1}`$, $`B(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_2\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_2}`$, $`A_S(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_{S1}\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_{S1}}`$, $`B_S(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_{S2}\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_{S2}}`$, $`A_N(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_{N1}\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_{N1}}`$ and $`B_N(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_{N2}\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_{N2}}`$ respectively. The two terms of $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f)`$ represent two sources of the dispersion of $`S_3`$: the intrinsic dispersion of signal and that caused by noise. Noise dominates at small smoothing scale, so we expect that $`B_N(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)<0`$, while we expect $`B_S(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)>0`$ because of the large smoothing behavior of $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ from signal(Fig.3). For the Wiener function, we can just parameterize the dependence of skewness $`S_3`$ and its standard deviation $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ as $`S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_1\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_1}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)=A_2\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{B_2}`$ respectively, because it is due to its independence of smoothing radius.

We fit the relation of $`S_3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ with a function of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\theta _f`$ by Eqs.(7) and (8) for all filters except for WN. Their best fit coefficients $`A_{S1},B_{S1},A_{S2},B_{S2},A_{N1},B_{N1}`$, $`A_{N2},B_{N2}`$ are listed in Table LABEL:table:fit respectively, the best fit relations of which are also plotted with smoother lines in Fig.2 and 3. For the WN filter, the best fit coefficients $`A_1=68.03\pm 2.37`$, $`B_1=0.67\pm 0.03`$, $`A_2=18.17\pm 6.13`$ and $`B_2=0.35\pm 0.26`$, and the dashed lines in Fig.4 show the best fit to $`S_3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$. In the fit of skewness $`S_3`$, we weighted using the standard deviation of the skewness. Using these best fit coefficients, we can calculate the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ with the function of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and $`\theta _f`$, which are shown in Fig.5 and 6. As expected, we find in Fig.5 that there does exist an optimal smoothing scale for each class of filter (except for the WN filter) that has a minimum error for the inferred $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. This optimal smoothing scale has only a weak dependence on cosmology except for GS filter. The minimum $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ decreases toward lower $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. Due to the $`S_3\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{0.8}`$ behavior (Table LABEL:table:fit), at low $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$, a small change of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ results in a large change of $`S_3`$. But $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ does not have such strong $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ dependence, thus the resulting error in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ decreases toward lower $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. In addition, we show in Fig.6 the relative uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m/\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ as a function of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ smoothed at the optimal filter radius for all of filters respectively. It is shown that the relative uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m/\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ for the Compensated Gaussian filter almost stays constant with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.1`$, and takes the smallest value in the range from $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.2`$ to 0.6 of interest compared with that of other filters. By comparing the minimum of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ for each filter class, we then conclude that the compensated Gaussian filter to be the optimal filter for all cosmologies. The relative uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m/\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ at the optimal filter scale for this filter is nearly independent of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$, and the corresponding optimal filter scale is about 2.5 arc minutes.

## 4 Conclusions

We have studied the power of weak lensing surveys to measure the matter density of the universe without relying on any exterior data sets. We found that the CFHT Legacy Survey can measure a fractional accuracy in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ of 10%, which is competitive with global joint analyses, but bypasses a large number of cross calibration uncertainties.

We ran a series of high resolution N-body simulation to study statistical skewness properties of weak lensing by large-scale structure in the universe with a range of cosmological matter density parameters. We added noise due to intrinsic ellipticity of background faint galaxies to the simulated $`\kappa `$ fields and smoothed it using different filters with a range of smoothing radii. We calculated the skewness $`S_3`$ of the smoothed $`\kappa `$ field with added Gaussian noise and predicted the uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ for the cosmological mass density parameter for a given $`S_3`$ and smoothing radius $`\theta _f`$. We examined the relative discriminating power of different window functions for distinguishing cosmological models in the upcoming CFHT Legacy Survey. Except for the Wiener filter, we found the optimal smoothing radius for all of four window functions that minimizes $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. This optimal smoothing scale has only a weak dependence on cosmology. The compensated Gaussian function was the optimal filter for measuring $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ from skewness. The relative uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_m/\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ smoothed at the optimal filter radius for Compensated Gaussian filter is about 10%.

To overcome the irregularity of the simulated $`S_3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$, we have fitted their smoothing scale and cosmology dependence with some phenomenological power laws. One could derive these relations analytically using perturbation theory following the theoretical work of Bernardeau et al. (1997). But since skewness is intrinsically non-linear, such a perturbation approach has to be tested against simulations. In fact, in our work based on simulations, the optimal filter radius is a few arc minutes or $`1`$ Mpc/h, which lies in strongly non-linear regime, where perturbation theory breaks down (Gaztanaga & Bernardeau, 1998). In the non-linear regime, a semi analytical model, hyperextended perturbation theory (hereafter HEPT) (Scoccimarro & Frieman, 1999), which applies at the highly non-linear regime, and a fitting formula to interpolate between the quasi-linear and highly non-linear regime (Scoccimarro & Couchman, 2001), have been applied to predict $`S_3`$ (Hui, 1999; Van Waerbeke et al., 2001). Since these models reply on simulations for calibration, they by no means can produce better result than simulations. Furthermore, to calculate the lensing $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_3`$ analytically, one has to know the $`S_6`$ of the density field, which can be predicted by HEPT but has not been tested against simulations (Scoccimarro & Frieman, 1999). So we’d rather using our fitting formula approach instead of adopting these analytical results.

We thank an anonymous referee for several helpful suggestions on the manuscript. T.J.Zhang would like to thank CITA for its hospitality during his visit. The research was supported in part by NSERC and computational resources of the CFI funded infrastructure. P.J.Zhang thanks the department of astronomy & astrophysics and CITA of University of Toronto where part of the work was done. P.J.Zhang is supported by the DOE and the NASA grant NAG 5-10842 at Fermilab.