Scrutinizing exotic cosmological models using essence supernova data combined with other cosmological probes

T. M. Davis*, E. Mörtsell, J. Sollerman, A. C. Becker, S. Blondin, P. Challis, A. Clocchiatti, A. V. Filippenko, R. J. Foley, P. M. Garnavich, S. Jha, K. Krisciunas, R. P. Kirshner, B. Leibundgut, W. Li, T. Matheson, G. Miknaitis, G. Pignata, A. Rest, A. G. RiessB. P. Schmidt, R. C. Smith, J. Spyromilio, C. W. Stubbs, N. B. Suntzeff, J. L. Tonry, W. M. Wood-Vasey, A. Zenteno

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    513 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The first cosmological results from the ESSENCE supernova survey (Wood-Vasey and coworkers) are extended to a wider range of cosmological models including dynamical dark energy and nonstandard cosmological models. We fold in a greater number of external data sets such as the recent Higher-z release of high-redshift supernovae (Riess and coworkers), as well as several complementary cosmological probes. Model comparison statistics such as the Bayesian and Akaike information criteria are applied to gauge the worth of models. These statistics favor models that give a good fit with fewer parameters. Based on this analysis, the preferred cosmological model is the flat cosmological constant model, where the expansion history of the universe can be adequately described with only one free parameter describing the energy content of the universe. Among the more exotic models that provide good fits to the data, we note a preference for models whose best-fit parameters reduce them to the cosmological constant model.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)716-725
    Number of pages10
    JournalAstrophysical Journal
    Volume666
    Issue number2 I
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2007

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