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

Journal Article · Tue Feb 15 04:00:00 EST 2011 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.83.043004· OSTI ID:21513082

Bhattacharya, Suman; Kosowsky, Arthur; Newman, Jeffrey A; Zentner, Andrew R ^[1]

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1. T-2, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)

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.

• OSTI ID: 21513082
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 83; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
BINARY STARS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
ERUPTIVE VARIABLE STARS
EVOLUTION
GALAXIES
GRAVITATION
LUMINOSITY
MATTER
MICROWAVE RADIATION
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
OPTICAL PROPERTIES
PERFORMANCE
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
RADIATIONS
RED SHIFT
RELICT RADIATION
SATELLITES
SPECTRA
STARS
SUPERNOVAE
TELESCOPES
VARIABLE STARS
VELOCITY