Programme by Session

The SKA opens up the novel possibility of conducting weak lensing studies with radio continuum emission, complementing and perhaps surpassing counterpart surveys in the optical. A major systematic uncertainty for weak lensing is the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies which, if unaccounted for, masquerades as a genuine cosmic shear signal. The recent advent of state-of-the-art cosmological simulations that accurately reproduce the key characteristics of the galaxy population has enabled an assessment of the expected IA signal. To date this work has focussed on the IA of galaxies as seen in the optical regime; I will discuss the extension of such assessments into the radio continuum regime using the EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation. Preliminary results indicate that the IA signal will be lower in radio surveys than their optical counterparts.