Falsifying Paradigms for Cosmic Acceleration

Abstract

Consistency relations between growth of structure and expansion history observables exist for any physical explanation of cosmic acceleration. We perform MCMC likelihood exploration of these relations, using future SNAP supernova and Planck CMB data to derive the expected variation in the growth and distance functions and the Hubble parameter under different classes of models for dark energy — a cosmological constant, scalar field quintessence, or a general smooth component, allowing at the same time for nonzero curvature and early dark energy. For each class we identify tight redshift-dependent predictions.