Probe Of Dark Energy Research Articles

Chasing the phantom: A closer look at type Ia supernovae and the dark energy equation of state

Some recent observations provide $> 2\sigma$ evidence for phantom dark energy -- a value of the dark energy equation of state less than the cosmological-constant value of $-1$. We focus on constraining the equation of state by combining current data from the most mature geometrical probes of dark energy: Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS3), the Supernova Cosmology Project (Union2.1), and the Pan-STARRS1 survey (PS1); cosmic microwave background measurements from Planck and WMAP9; and a combination of measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations. The combined data are consistent with $w = -1$ for the Union2.1 sample, though they present moderate ($\sim 1.9\sigma$) evidence for a phantom value when either the SNLS3 or PS1 sample is used instead. We study the dependence of the constraints on the redshift, stretch, color, and host galaxy stellar mass of SNe, but we find no unusual trends. In contrast, the constraints strongly depend on any external $H_0$ prior: a higher adopted value for the direct measurement of the Hubble constant ($H_0 \gtrsim 71~\text{km/s/Mpc}$) leads to $\gtrsim 2\sigma$ evidence for phantom dark energy. Given Planck data, we can therefore make the following statement at $2\sigma$ confidence: either the SNLS3 and PS1 data have systematics that remain unaccounted for or the Hubble constant is below 71 km/s/Mpc; else the dark energy equation of state is indeed phantom.

A New Concept in Spherical Geometry for Physical and Cosmological Applications

After establishing the fundamental physics prizes, Yuri Milner said: Unlike the Nobel in physics, the Fundamental Physics Prize can be awarded to scientists whose ideas have not yet been verified by experiments, which often occurs decades later. Sometimes a radical new idea “really deserves recognition right away because it expands our understanding of at least what is possible.” Keeping this mind the author formulated two spherical geometrical theorems which may applied for the studies and probes of fundamental particles, quantum gravity, gravitational waves, dark matter and dark energy and also for engineering sciences.

Maps of CMB lensing deflection from N-body simulations in Coupled Dark Energy Cosmologies

We produce lensing potential and deflection-angle maps in order to simulate the weak gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) via ray-tracing through the COupled Dark Energy Cosmological Simulations (CoDECS), the largest suite of N-body simulations to date for interacting Dark Energy cosmologies. The constructed maps faithfully reflect the N-body cosmic structures on a range of scales going from the arcminute to the degree scale, limited only by the resolution and extension of the simulations. We investigate the variation of the lensing pattern due to the underlying Dark Energy (DE) dynamics, characterised by different background and perturbation behaviours as a consequence of the interaction between the DE field and Cold Dark Matter (CDM). In particular, we study in detail the results from three cosmological models differing in the background and perturbations evolution at the epoch in which the lensing cross section is most effective, corresponding to a redshift of ∼ 1, with the purpose to isolate their imprints in the lensing observables, regardless of the compatibility of these models with present constraints. The scenarios investigated here include a reference ΛCDM cosmology, a standard coupled DE (cDE) scenario, and a ``bouncing" cDE scenario. For the standard cDE scenario, we find that typical differences in the lensing potential result from two effects: the enhanced growth of linear CDM density fluctuations with respect to the ΛCDM case, and the modified nonlinear dynamics of collapsed structures induced by the DE-CDM interaction. As a consequence, CMB lensing highlights the DE impact in the cosmological expansion, even in the degenerate case where the amplitude of the linear matter density perturbations, parametrised through σ8, is the same in both the standard cDE and ΛCDM cosmologies. For the ``bouncing" scenario, we find that the two opposite behaviours of the lens density contrast and of the matter abundance lead to a counter-intuitive effect, making the power of the lensing signal in this model lower by 10% than in the ΛCDM scenario. Moreover, we compare the behaviour of CDM and baryons in CoDECS separately, in order to isolate effects coming from the coupling with the DE component. We find that, in the bouncing scenario, baryons show an opposite trend with respect to CDM, due to the coupling of the latter with the DE component. These results confirm the relevance of CMB lensing as a probe for DE at the early stages of cosmic acceleration, and demonstrate the reliability of N-body based large scale CMB lensing simulations in the context of DE studies.

COSMOGRAIL: the COSmological MOnitoring of GRAvItational Lenses

This paper presents optical R-band light curves and the time delay of the doubly imaged gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1001+5027 at a redshift of 1.838. We have observed this target for more than six years, between March 2005 and July 2011, using the 1.2-m Mercator Telescope, the 1.5-m telescope of the Maidanak Observatory, and the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope. Our resulting light curves are composed of 443 independent epochs, and show strong intrinsic quasar variability, with an amplitude of the order of 0.2 magnitudes. From this data, we measure the time delay using five different methods, all relying on distinct approaches. One of these techniques is a new development presented in this paper. All our time-delay measurements are perfectly compatible. By combining them, we conclude that image A is leading B by 119.3 ± 3.3 days (1σ, 2.8% uncertainty), including systematic errors. It has been shown recently that such accurate time-delay measurements offer a highly complementary probe of dark energy and spatial curvature, as they independently constrain the Hubble constant. The next mandatory step towards using SDSS J1001+5027 in this context will be the measurement of the velocity dispersion of the lensing galaxy, in combination with deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging.

A MULTIVARIATE FIT LUMINOSITY FUNCTION AND WORLD MODEL FOR LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

It is proposed that the luminosity function, the rest-frame spectral correlations and distributions of cosmological Long-duration (Type-II) Gamma-Ray Bursts (LGRBs) may be very well described as multivariate log-normal distribution. This result is based on careful selection, analysis and modeling of LGRBs' temporal and spectral variables in the largest catalog of Gamma-Ray Bursts available to date: 2130 BATSE GRBs, while taking into account the detection threshold and possible selection effects. Constraints on the joint rest-frame distribution of the isotropic peak luminosity (Liso), total isotropic emission (Eiso), the time-integrated spectral peak energy (Epkz) and duration (T90z) of LGRBs are derived. The presented analysis provides evidence for a relatively large fraction of LGRBs that have been missed by BATSE detector with Eiso extending down to ~ 10^49 [erg] and observed spectral peak energies (Epk) as low as ~ 5 [keV]. LGRBs with rest-frame duration T90z < 1 [s] or observer-frame duration T90 < 2 [s] appear to be rare events (<0.1% chance of occurrence). The model predicts a fairly strong but highly significant correlation (rho=0.58 \pm 0.04) between Eiso & Epkz of LGRBs. Also predicted are strong correlations of Liso & Eiso with T90z and moderate correlation between Liso & Epkz. The strength and significance of the correlations found, encourage the search for underlying mechanisms, though undermine their capabilities as probes of Dark Energy's equation of state at high redshifts. The presented analysis favors -- but does not necessitate -- a cosmic rate for BATSE LGRBs tracing metallicity evolution consistent with a cutoff ~ 0.2-0.5, assuming no luminosity-redshift evolution.

IMAGE ANALYSIS FOR COSMOLOGY: RESULTS FROM THE GREAT10 STAR CHALLENGE

We present the results from the first public blind PSF reconstruction challenge, the GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2010 (GREAT10) Star Challenge. Reconstruction of a spatially varying PSF, sparsely sampled by stars, at non-star positions is a critical part in the image analysis for weak lensing where inaccuracies in the modelled ellipticity and size-squared can impact the ability to measure the shapes of galaxies. This is of importance because weak lensing is a particularly sensitive probe of dark energy, and can be used to map the mass distribution of large scale structure. Participants in the challenge were presented with 27,500 stars over 1300 images subdivided into 26 sets, where in each set a category change was made in the type or spatial variation of the PSF. Thirty submissions were made by 9 teams. The best methods reconstructed the PSF with an accuracy of ~0.00025 in ellipticity and ~0.00074 in size squared. For a fixed pixel scale narrower PSFs were found to be more difficult to model than larger PSFs, and the PSF reconstruction was severely degraded with the inclusion of an atmospheric turbulence model (although this result is likely to be a strong function of the amplitude of the turbulence power spectrum).

Towards more realistic forecasting of dark energy constraints from galaxy redshift surveys

Galaxy redshift surveys are becoming increasingly important as a dark energy probe. We improve the forecasting of dark energy constraints from galaxy redshift surveys by using the ‘dewiggled’ galaxy power spectrum, |$P_{{\rm dw}}({\boldsymbol k})$|⁠, in the Fisher matrix calculations. Since |$P_{{\rm dw}}({\boldsymbol k})$| is a good fit to real galaxy clustering data over most of the scale range of interest, our approach is more realistic compared to previous work in forecasting dark energy constraints from galaxy redshift surveys. We find that our new approach gives results in excellent agreement when compared to the results from the actual data analysis of the clustering of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 luminous red galaxies. We provide forecasts of the dark energy constraints from a plausible Stage IV galaxy redshift survey.

Relativistic corrections and non-Gaussianity in radio continuum surveys

Forthcoming radio continuum surveys will cover large volumes of the observable Universe and will reach to high redshifts, making them potentially powerful probes of darkenergy, modified gravity and non-Gaussianity. Weconsider the continuum surveys with LOFAR, WSRT and ASKAP, and examples of continuum surveys withthe SKA. We extend recent work on these surveys by including redshift space distortions and lensing convergence in the radio source auto-correlation.In addition we compute the general relativistic (GR) corrections tothe angular power spectrum. These GR corrections to the standardNewtonian analysis of the power spectrum become significant onscales near and beyond the Hubble scale at each redshift. We find that the GR corrections are at most percent-level in LOFAR, WODAN and EMU surveys, but they can produceO(10%) changes for high enough sensitivity SKA continuum surveys. The signal is however dominated by cosmic variance, and multiple-tracer techniques will be needed to overcome this problem. The GR corrections are suppressed in continuum surveys because of theintegration over redshift — we expect that GR corrections will be enhanced for future SKA HI surveys in which the source redshifts will be known.We also provide predictions for the angular power spectra in the case where the primordialperturbations have local non-Gaussianity. We find that non-Gaussianity dominates over GR corrections, and rises above cosmic variance when fNL≳5 for SKA continuum surveys.

Numerical simulations of the dark universe: State of the art and the next decade

ABSTRACT We present a review of the current state of the art of cosmological dark matter simulations, with particular emphasis on the implications for dark matter detection efforts and studies of dark energy. This review is intended both for particle physicists, who may find the cosmological simulation literature opaque or confusing, and for astro-physicists, who may not be familiar with the role of simulations for observational and experimental probes of dark matter and dark energy. Our work is complementary to the contribution by Baldi in this issue, which focuses on the treatment of dark energy and cosmic acceleration in dedicated N-body simulations. Truly massive dark matter-only simulations are being conducted on national supercomputing centers, employing from several billion to over half a trillion particles to simulate the formation and evolution of cosmologically representative volumes (cosmic scale) or to zoom in on individual halos (cluster and galactic scale). These simulations cost millions of core-hours, require tens to hundreds of terabytes of memory, and use up to petabytes of disk storage. Predictions from such simulations touch on almost every aspect of dark matter and dark energy studies, and we give a comprehensive overview of this connection. We also discuss the limitations of the cold and collisionless DM-only approach, and describe in some detail efforts to include different particle physics as well as baryonic physics in cosmological galaxy formation simulations, including a discussion of recent results highlighting how the distribution of dark matter in halos may be altered. We end with an outlook for the next decade, presenting our view of how the field can be expected to progress.

CMB polarization impact on cosmological constraints

Cosmic microwave background polarization encodes information not only on the early universe but also dark energy, neutrino mass, and gravity in the late universe through CMB lensing. Ground based surveys such as ACTpol, PolarBear, SPTpol significantly complement cosmological constraints from the Planck satellite, strengthening the CMB dark energy figure of merit and neutrino mass constraints by factors of 3-4. This changes the dark energy probe landscape. We evaluate the state of knowledge in 2017 from ongoing experiments including dark energy surveys (supernovae, weak lensing, galaxy clustering), fitting for dynamical dark energy, neutrino mass, and a modified gravitational growth index. Adding a modest strong lensing time delay survey improves those dark energy constraints by a further 32%, and an enhanced low redshift supernova program improves them by 26%.

Shape measurement by using basis functions

AbstractGravitational lensing is one of most promising tools to probe dark energy and dark matter in our Universe. Lensing by larger-scale structures distorts the shape of background galaxies. For ground-based observations the shape is further distorted by atmospheric turbulence and optical distortions. Many algorithms were proposed to measure the shear signal but the systematic biases are still too large to be acceptable for the larger-sky surveys in the future. I will present our new algorithms for PSF reconstruction and shape measurements based on several sets of basis functions.

PRECISION COSMOGRAPHY WITH STACKED VOIDS

We present a purely geometrical method for probing the expansion history of the Universe from the observation of the shape of stacked voids in spectroscopic redshift surveys. Our method is an Alcock-Paczynski (AP) test based on the average sphericity of voids posited on the local isotropy of the Universe. It works by comparing the temporal extent of cosmic voids along the line of sight with their angular, spatial extent. We describe the algorithm that we use to detect and stack voids in redshift shells on the light cone and test it on mock light cones produced from N-body simulations. We establish a robust statistical model for estimating the average stretching of voids in redshift space and quantify the contamination by peculiar velocities. Finally, assuming that the void statistics that we derive from N-body simulations is preserved when considering galaxy surveys, we assess the capability of this approach to constrain dark energy parameters. We report this assessment in terms of the figure of merit (FoM) of the dark energy task force and in particular of the proposed EUCLID mission which is particularly suited for this technique since it is a spectroscopic survey. The FoM due to stacked voids from the EUCLID wide survey may double that of all other dark energy probes derived from EUCLID data alone (combined with Planck priors). In particular, voids seem to outperform Baryon Acoustic Oscillations by an order of magnitude. This result is consistent with simple estimates based on mode-counting. The AP test based on stacked voids may be a significant addition to the portfolio of major dark energy probes and its potentialities must be studied in detail.

Robust constraints on dark energy and gravity from galaxy clustering data

Galaxy clustering data provide a powerful probe of dark energy. We examine how the constraints on the scaled expansion history of the universe, x_h(z)=H(z)s (with s denoting the sound horizon at the drag epoch), and the scaled angular diameter distance, x_d(z)=D_A(z)/s, depend on the methods used to analyze the galaxy clustering data. We find that using the observed galaxy power spectrum, P_g^{obs}(k), x_h(z) and x_d(z) are measured more accurately and are significantly less correlated with each other, compared to using only the information from the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in P_g^{obs}(k). Using the {x_h(z), x_d(z)} from P_g^{obs}(k) gives a DETF dark energy FoM approximately a factor of two larger than using the {x_h(z), x_d(z)} from BAO only; this provides a robust conservative method to go beyond BAO only in extracting dark energy information from galaxy clustering data. We find that a Stage IV galaxy redshift survey, with 0.7<z<2 over 15,000 (deg)^2, can measure {x_h(z), x_d(z), f_g(z)G(z)\tilde{P}_0^{1/2}/s^4} with high precision (where f_g(z) and G(z) are the linear growth rate and factor of large scale structure respectively, and \tilde{P}_0 is the dimensionless normalization of P_g^{obs}(k)), when redshift-space distortion information is included. The measurement of f_g(z)G(z)\tilde{P}_0^{1/2}/s^4 provides a powerful test of gravity, and significantly boosts the dark energy FoM when general relativity is assumed.

Gravitational-wave standard siren without redshift identification

Proposed space-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors such as DECIGO and BBO will detect ~ 106 neutron-star (NS) binaries and determine the luminosity distances to the binaries with high precision. Combining the luminosity distances with cosmologically-induced phase corrections on the GWs, cosmological expansion out to high redshift can be measured without the redshift determinations of host galaxies by electromagnetic observation and can be a unique probe for dark energy. This article is based on the results obtained in [1] where we investigated constraining power of the GW standard siren without redshift information on the equation of state of dark energy with future space-based GW detectors. We also compare the results with those obtained with other instruments and methods.

Constraining the dark energy and smoothness parameter with type Ia supernovae and gamma-ray bursts

The existence of inhomogeneities in the observed Universe modifies the distance-redshift relations thereby affecting the results of cosmological tests in comparison to the ones derived assuming spatially uniform models. By modeling the inhomogeneities through a Zeldovich-Kantowski-Dyer-Roeder (ZKDR) approach which is phenomenologically characterized by a smoothness parameter $\alpha$, we rediscuss the constraints on the cosmic parameters based on Supernovae type Ia and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) data. The present analysis is restricted to a flat $\Lambda$CDM model with the reasonable assumption that $\Lambda$ does not clump. A $\chi^{2}$-analysis using 557 SNe Ia data from the Union2 Compilation Data (Amanullah {\it et al.} 2010) constrains the pair of parameters ($\Omega_m, \alpha$) to $\Omega_m=0.27_{-0.03}^{+0.08}$($2\sigma$) and $\alpha \geq 0.25$. A similar analysis based only on 59 Hymnium GRBs (Wei 2010) constrains the matter density parameter to be $\Omega_m= 0.35^{+0.62}_{-0.24}$ ($2\sigma$) while all values for the smoothness parameter are allowed. By performing a joint analysis, it is found that $\Omega_m = 0.27^{+0.06}_{-0.03}$ and $\alpha \geq 0.52$. As a general result, although considering that current GRB data alone cannot constrain the smoothness $\alpha$ parameter our analysis provides an interesting cosmological probe for dark energy even in the presence of inhomogeneities.

Cosmological model-independent Gamma-ray bursts calibration and its cosmological constraint to dark energy

As so far, the redshift of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can extend to z ∼ 8 which makes it as a complementary probe of dark energy to supernova Ia (SN Ia). However, the calibration of GRBs is still a big challenge when they are used to constrain cosmological models. Though, the absolute magnitude of GRBs is still unknown, the slopes of GRBs correlations can be used as a useful constraint to dark energy in a completely cosmological model independent way. In this paper, we follow Wang's model-independent distance measurement method and calculate their values by using 109 GRBs events via the so-called Amati relation. Then, we use the obtained model-independent distances to constrain ΛCDM model as an example.

Cosmology with space-based gravitational-wave detectors: Dark energy and primordial gravitational waves

Proposed space-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors such as DECIGO and BBO will detect ~10^6 neutron-star (NS) binaries and determine the luminosity distances to the binaries with high precision. Combining the luminosity distances with cosmologically-induced phase corrections on the GWs, cosmological expansion out to high redshift can be measured without the redshift determinations of host galaxies by electromagnetic observation and be a unique probe for dark energy. On the other hand, such a NS-binary foreground should be subtracted to detect primordial GWs produced during inflation. Thus, the constraining power on dark energy and the detectability of the primordial gravitational waves strongly depend on the detector sensitivity and are in close relation with one another. In this paper, we investigate the constraints on the equation of state of dark energy with future space-based GW detectors with/without identifying the redshifts of host galaxies. We also study the sensitivity to the primordial GWs, properly dealing with the residual of the NS binary foreground. Based on the results, we discuss the detector sensitivity required to achieve the forementioned targeted study of cosmology.

Robustness to systematics for future dark energy probes

We extend the Figure of Merit formalism usually adopted to quantify the statistical performance of future dark energy probes to assess the robustness of a future mission to plausible systematic bias. We introduce a new robustness Figure of Merit which can be computed in the Fisher Matrix formalism given arbitrary systematic biases in the observable quantities. We argue that robustness to systematics is an important new quantity that should be taken into account when optimizing future surveys. We illustrate our formalism with toy examples, and apply it to future type Ia supernova (SNIa) and baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) surveys. For the simplified systematic biases that we consider, we find that SNIa are a somewhat more robust probe of dark energy parameters than the BAO. We trace this back to a geometrical alignement of systematic bias direction with statistical degeneracy directions in the dark energy parameter space.

Designing decisive detections

We present a general Bayesian formalism for the definition of Figures of Merit (FoMs) quantifying the scientific return of a future experiment. We introduce two new FoMs for future experiments based on their model selection capabilities, called the decisiveness of the experiment and the expected strength of evidence. We illustrate these by considering dark energy probes, and compare the relative merits of stage II, III and IV dark energy probes. We find that probes based on supernovae and on weak lensing perform rather better on model selection tasks than is indicated by their Fisher matrix FoM as defined by the Dark Energy Task Force. We argue that our ability to optimize future experiments for dark energy model selection goals is limited by our current uncertainty over the models and their parameters, which is ignored in the usual Fisher matrix forecasts. Our approach gives a more realistic assessment of the capabilities of future probes and can be applied in a variety of situations.

Galaxy peculiar velocities from large-scale supernova surveys as a dark energy probe

Upcoming imaging surveys such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will repeatedly scan large areas of sky and have the potential to yield million-supernova catalogs. Type Ia supernovae are excellent standard candles and will provide distance measures that suffice to detect mean pairwise velocities of their host galaxies. We show that when combining these distance measures with photometric redshifts for either the supernovae or their host galaxies, the mean pairwise velocities of the host galaxies will provide a dark energy probe which is competitive with other widely discussed methods. Adding information from this test to type Ia supernova photometric luminosity distances from the same experiment, plus the cosmic microwave background power spectrum from the Planck satellite, improves the Dark Energy Task Force figure of merit by a factor of 1.8. Pairwise velocity measurements require no additional observational effort beyond that required to perform the traditional supernova luminosity distance test, but may provide complementary constraints on dark energy parameters and the nature of gravity. Incorporating additional spectroscopic redshift follow-up observations could provide important dark energy constraints from pairwise velocities alone. Mean pairwise velocities are much less sensitive to systematic redshift errors than the luminosity distance test or weak lensing techniques, and also are only mildly affected by systematic evolution of supernova luminosity.