Accurate Measurement of the Lensing Magnification by BOSS CMASS Galaxies and Its Implications for Cosmology and Dark Matter

Magnification serves as an independent and complementary gravitational lensing measurement to shear. We develop a novel method to achieve an accurate and robust magnification measurement around BOSS CMASS galaxies across physical scales of 0.016 h −1 Mpc < r p < 10 h −1 Mpc. We first measure the excess total flux density δ M of the source galaxies in the deep DECaLS photometric catalog that are lensed by CMASS galaxies. We convert δ M to magnification μ by establishing the δ μ – δ M relation using a deeper photometric sample. By comparing magnification measurements in three optical bands ( grz ), we constrain the dust attenuation curve and its radial distribution, discovering a steep attenuation curve in the circumgalactic medium of CMASS galaxies. We further compare dust-corrected magnification measurements to model predictions from high-resolution dark matter-only (DMO) simulations in Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and Planck cosmologies, as well as the hydrodynamic simulation TNG300-1 , using precise galaxy–halo connections from the Photometric objects Around Cosmic webs method and the accurate ray-tracing algorithm P3MLens . For r p > 70 h −1 kpc, our magnification measurements are in good agreement with both WMAP and Planck cosmologies, resulting in an estimation of the matter fluctuation amplitude of S 8 = 0.816 ± 0.024. However, at r p < 70 h −1 kpc, we observe an excess magnification signal, which is higher than the DMO model in Planck cosmology at 2.8 σ and would be exacerbated if significant baryon feedback is included. Implications of the potential small scale discrepancy for the nature of dark matter and for the processes governing galaxy formation are discussed.