FIRST-YEAR SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY-II (SDSS-II) SUPERNOVA RESULTS: CONSTRAINTS ON NONSTANDARD COSMOLOGICAL MODELS

Journal Article · Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2009 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/703/2/1374· OSTI ID:21371903

Sollerman, J; Davis, T M ^[1]; Moertsell, E ^[2]; Blomqvist, M ^[3]; Bassett, B; Smith, M ^[4]; Becker, A C; Vanderplas, J T ^[5]; Cinabro, D ^[6]; Filippenko, A V; Foley, R J ^[7]; Frieman, J ^[8]; Garnavich, P ^[9]; Lampeitl, H; Nichol, R C ^[10]; Marriner, J ^[11]; Miquel, R ^[12]; Richmond, M W ^[13]; Sako, M ^[14]; Schneider, D P ^[15]

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1. Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, Copenhagen (Denmark)
2. Oskar Klein Centre, Department of Physics, AlbaNova, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm (Sweden)
3. The Oskar Klein Centre, Department of Astronomy, AlbaNova, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm (Sweden)
4. South African Astronomical Observatory, P.O. Box 9, Observatory 7935 (South Africa)
5. Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195 (United States)
6. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202 (United States)
7. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411 (United States)
8. Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, The University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
9. University of Notre Dame, 225 Nieuwland Science, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5670 (United States)
10. Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 3FX (United Kingdom)
11. Center for Astrophysics, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, P. O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510 (United States)
12. Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats, Barcelona (Spain)
13. Physics Department, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623 (United States)
14. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, 209 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (United States)
15. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 525 Davey Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)

We use the new Type Ia supernovae discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II supernova survey, together with additional supernova data sets as well as observations of the cosmic microwave background and baryon acoustic oscillations to constrain cosmological models. This complements the standard cosmology analysis presented by Kessler et al. in that we discuss and rank a number of the most popular nonstandard cosmology scenarios. When this combined data set is analyzed using the MLCS2k2 light-curve fitter, we find that more exotic models for cosmic acceleration provide a better fit to the data than the LAMBDACDM model. For example, the flat Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model is ranked higher by our information-criteria (IC) tests than the standard model with a flat universe and a cosmological constant. When the supernova data set is instead analyzed using the SALT-II light-curve fitter, the standard cosmological-constant model fares best. This investigation of how sensitive cosmological model selection is to assumptions about, and within, the light-curve fitters thereby highlights the need for an improved understanding of these unresolved systematic effects. Our investigation also includes inhomogeneous LemaItre-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) models. While our LTB models can be made to fit the supernova data as well as any other model, the extra parameters they require are not supported by our IC analysis. Finally, we explore more model-independent ways to investigate the cosmic expansion based on this new data set.

• OSTI ID: 21371903
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 703, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/703/2/1374; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
BARYONS
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
COSMOLOGY
RELICT RADIATION
SUPERNOVAE
UNIVERSE
BINARY STARS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
ERUPTIVE VARIABLE STARS
FERMIONS
HADRONS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MICROWAVE RADIATION
RADIATIONS
STARS
VARIABLE STARS