A COMPREHENSIVE INVESTIGATION ON THE SLOWING DOWN OF COSMIC ACCELERATION

Abstract

ABSTRACT Shafieloo et al. first proposed the possibility that the current cosmic acceleration (CA) is slowing down. However, this is rather counterintuitive because a slowing down CA cannot be accommodated in most mainstream cosmological models. In this work, by exploring the evolutionary trajectories of the dark energy equation of state w(z) and deceleration parameter q(z), we present a comprehensive investigation on the slowing down of CA from both the theoretical and the observational sides. For the theoretical side, we study the impact of different w(z) using six parametrization models, and then we discuss the effects of spatial curvature. For the observational side, we investigate the effects of different type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO), and cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. We find that (1) the evolution of CA is insensitive to the specific form of w ( z ) ; in contrast, a non-flat universe favors a slowing down CA more than a flat universe. (2) SNLS3 SNe Ia data sets favor a slowing down CA at a 1σ confidence level, while JLA SNe Ia samples prefer an eternal CA; in contrast, the effects of different BAO data are negligible. (3) Compared with CMB distance prior data, full CMB data favor a slowing down CA more. (4) Due to the low significance, the slowing down of CA is still a theoretical possibility that cannot be confirmed by the current observations.