Direct measurement of the positive acceleration of the universe and testing inhomogeneous models under gravitational wave cosmology

Abstract

One possibility for explaining the apparent accelerating expansion of the universe is that we live in the center of a spherically inhomogeneous universe. Although current observations cannot fully distinguish ΛCDM and these inhomogeneous models, direct measurement of the acceleration of the universe can be a powerful tool in probing them. We have shown that, if ΛCDM is the correct model, DECIGO/BBO would be able to detect the positive redshift drift (which is the time evolution of the source redshift z) in 3–5 year gravitational wave (GW) observations from neutron-star binaries, which enables us to rule out any Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) void model with monotonically increasing density profile. We may even be able to rule out any LTB model unless we allow unrealistically steep density profile at z ∼ 0. This test can be performed with GW observations alone, without any reference to electromagnetic observations, and is more powerful than the redshift drift measurement using Lyman α forest.