CARS: The CFHTLS-Archive-Research Survey III. First detection of cosmic magnification in samples of normal high-z galaxies

Context. Weak gravitational lensing (WL) has been established as one of the most promising probes of cosmology. So far, most studies have exploited the shear effect of WL leading to coherent distortions of galaxy shapes. WL also introduces coherent magnifications. Aims. We want to detect this cosmic magnification effect (coherent magnification by the large-scale structure of the Universe) in large samples of high-redshift galaxies selected from the Deep part of the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS). Methods. Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) selected by their colours to be at z = 2.5-5, are used as a background sample and are cross-correlated to foreground lens galaxies, which are selected by accurate photometric redshifts (photo-z's). The signals of LBGs in different magnitude bins are compared to predictions from WL theory. An optimally weighted correlation function is estimated by taking into account the slope of external LBG luminosity functions. Results. For the first time, we detect cosmic magnification in a sample of normal galaxies. These background sources are also the ones with the highest redshifts so far used for WL measurements. The amplitude and angular dependence of the cross-correlation functions agree well with theoretical expectations and the lensing signal is detected with high significance. Avoiding low-redshift ranges in the foreground samples which might contaminate the LBG samples we can make a measurement that is virtually free of systematics. In particular, we detect an anti-correlation between faint LBGs and foreground galaxies which cannot be caused by redshift overlap. Conclusions. Cross-correlating LBGs (and in future also photo-z selected galaxies) as background sources to well understood foreground samples based on accurate photo-z's will become a powerful cosmological probe in future large imaging surveys.