The Effect of Weak Lensing on the Angular Correlation Function of Faint Galaxies

The angular correlation function \wth of faint galaxies is affected both by nonlinear gravitational evolution and by magnification bias due to gravitational lensing. We compute the resulting \wth for different cosmological models and show how its shape and redshift evolution depend on \Omega and \Lambda. For galaxies at redshift greater than 1 (R magnitude fainter than about 24), magnification bias can significantly enhance or suppress \wth, depending on the slope of the number-magnitude relation. We show for example how it changes the ratio of \wth for two galaxy samples with different number-count slopes.