Weak lensing forecasts for dark energy, neutrinos and initial conditions

Weak gravitational lensing provides a sensitive probe of cosmological parameters by measuring the mass distribution and the geometry of the low redshift universe. We show how an all-sky weak lensing tomographic survey can jointly constrain different sets of cosmological parameters describing dark energy, massive neutrinos, and the primordial power spectrum. Using the Fisher matrix formalism with and without CMB priors, we examine how the constraints vary as the parameter set is enlarged. We find that weak lensing with CMB priors provides robust constraints on dark energy parameters and can simultaneously provide strong constraints on all three parameter sets. We also find that the dark energy sector is largely insensitive to the inclusion of the other cosmological sectors. (C) 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim