Gravity and Nongravity Modes in the VIRMOS‐DESCART Weak‐Lensing Survey

We analyze the weak lensing data of the VIRMOS imaging survey using projections (called E and B-modes) of the two independents observed correlation functions. The E-mode contains all the lensing signal, while noise and systematics contribute equally to the E and B modes provided that intrinsic alignment is negligible. The mode separation allows a measurement of the signal with a \√2 smaller error bars, and a separate channel to test for systematic errors. We apply various transformations, including a spherical harmonic space power spectrum C^E_l and C^B_l, which provides a direct measurement of the projected dark matter distribution for 500<l<10^4.