The Effects of Multiple Weak Deflections in Galaxy–Galaxy Lensing

The Hubble Deep Field (North) and the flanking fields are used investigate the occurrence of multiple weak lensing deflections along the line of sight in relatively deep imaging data (zlens ∼ 0.6, zsource ∼ 1.2). Ray tracing simulations of galaxy–galaxy lensing in the HDF-North show that proper inclusion of multiple weak deflections is important for a correct prediction of the net shear for most sources, and for a given source redshift the number of multiple weak deflections is largely insensitive to the cosmography. The effects of multiple weak deflections on the magnitude of the weak lensing signal are, of course, strong functions of the adopted halo parameters. Independent of the halo parameters, however, the closest lens to a source (in projection on the sky) is not the strongest lens in the case of more than 50% of the sources which acquire a net shear of γ < ∼ 0.01. In addition, multiple weak deflections result in a tangential shear about the lens centers that is greater than the tangential shear that would occur if source galaxies were lensed solely by the closest lens. Further, multiple weak deflections give rise to correlated image ellipticities and account for a substantial amount of the total cosmic shear signal on small angular scales in ΛCDM and open CDM models.