Telescope Optics and Weak Lensing: PSF Patterns due to Low Order Aberrations

In weak lensing investigations, galaxy shapes are corrected for the convolution by the point spread function (PSF) using stellar images. In this paper we use physical models of the telescope optics to understand the spatial variation of the PSF in the image plane. We introduce a set of parameters to model the key aberrations, which include defocus, focal plane tilt, primary and off-axis astigmatism, and coma. We also include the effects of guiding and seeing. We test our model with data from the Blanco 4 meter telescope in Cerro Tololo, Chile. We find that the physical model describes a substantial part of the PSF size and anisotropy over the field of view (over 90 percent of it, based on a chi-squared metric). We identify the primary contributors to the PSF patterns and study their covariances and principal components. We also identify correlations with the effect of gravity on the telescope. Finally, we discuss the improvements in PSF estimation that may be achieved by combining the physical model in this study with the purely empirical approach of Jarvis and Jain (2004). Subject headings: cosmology:gravitational lensing, telescope optics