No Arabic abstract
We present a Bayesian technique based on a maximum entropy method to reconstruct the dark energy equation of state $w(z)$ in a non--parametric way. This MaxEnt technique allows to incorporate relevant prior information while adjusting the degree of smoothing of the reconstruction in response to the structure present in the data. After demonstrating the method on synthetic data, we apply it to current cosmological data, separately analysing type Ia supernovae measurement from the HST/GOODS program and the first year Supernovae Legacy Survey (SNLS), complemented by cosmic microwave background and baryonic acoustic oscillations data. We find that the SNLS data are compatible with $w(z) = -1$ at all redshifts $0 leq z lsim 1100$, with errorbars of order 20% for the most constraining choice of priors. The HST/GOODS data exhibit a slight (about $1sigma$ significance) preference for $w>-1$ at $zsim 0.5$ and a drift towards $w>-1$ at larger redshifts, which however is not robust with respect to changes in our prior specifications. We employ both a constant equation of state prior model and a slowly varying $w(z)$ and find that our conclusions are only mildly dependent on this choice at high redshifts. Our method highlights the danger of employing parametric fits for the unknown equation of state, that can potentially miss or underestimate real structure in the data.
Measuring the statistics of galaxy peculiar velocities using redshift-space distortions is an excellent way of probing the history of structure formation. Because galaxies are expected to act as test particles within the flow of matter, this method avoids uncertainties due to an unknown galaxy density bias. We show that the parameter combination measured by redshift-space distortions, $fsigma_8^{rm mass}$ provides a good test of dark energy models, even without the knowledge of bias or $sigma_8^{rm mass}$ required to extract $f$ from this measurement (here $f$ is the logarithmic derivative of the linear growth rate, and $sigma_8^{rm mass}$ is the root-mean-square mass fluctuation in spheres with radius $8h^{-1}$Mpc). We argue that redshift-space distortion measurements will help to determine the physics behind the cosmic acceleration, testing whether it is related to dark energy or modified gravity, and will provide an opportunity to test possible dark energy clumping or coupling between dark energy and dark matter. If we can measure galaxy bias in addition, simultaneous measurement of both the overdensity and velocity fields can be used to test the validity of equivalence principle, through the continuity equation.
We apply a parametric reconstruction method to a homogeneous, isotropic and spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmological model filled of a fluid of dark energy (DE) with constant equation of state parameter interacting with dark matter (DM). The reconstruction method is based on expansions of the general interaction term and the relevant cosmological variables in terms of Chebyshev polynomials which form a complete set orthonormal functions. This interaction term describes an exchange of energy flow between the DE and DM within dark sector. To show how the method works we do the reconstruction of the interaction function expanding it in terms of only the first three Chebyshev polynomials and obtain the best estimation for the coefficients of the expansion as well as for the DE equation of the state constant parameter w using the type Ia Supernova SCP Union data set (307 SNe-Ia). The preliminary reconstruction shows that in the best scenario there is an energy transfer from DM to DE which worsen the problem of the cosmic coincidence in comparison with the LCDM model. We conclude that this fact is an indication of a serious drawback for the existence of such interaction between dark components.
We explore the properties of dark energy from recent observational data, including the Gold Sne Ia, the baryonic acoustic oscillation peak from SDSS, the CMB shift parameter from WMAP3, the X-ray gas mass fraction in cluster and the Hubble parameter versus redshift. The $Lambda CDM$ model with curvature and two parameterized dark energy models are studied. For the $Lambda CDM$ model, we find that the flat universe is consistent with observations at the $1sigma$ confidence level and a closed universe is slightly favored by these data. For two parameterized dark energy models, with the prior given on the present matter density, $Omega_{m0}$, with $Omega_{m0}=0.24$, $Omega_{m0}=0.28$ and $Omega_{m0}=0.32$, our result seems to suggest that the trend of $Omega_{m0}$ dependence for an evolving dark energy from a combination of the observational data sets is model-dependent.
We reconstruct the interaction rate between the dark matter and the holographic dark energy with the parameterized equation of states and the future event horizon as the infrared cut-off length. It is shown that the observational constraints from the 192 SNIa and BAO measurement permit the negative interaction in the wide region. Moreover, the usual phenomenological descriptions can not describe the reconstructed interaction well for many cases. The other possible interaction is also discussed.
Gurzadyan-Xue Dark Energy was derived in 1986 (twenty years before the paper of Gurzadyan-Xue). The paper by the present author, titled The Planck Length as a Cosmological Constant, published in Astrophysics Space Science, Vol. 127, p.133-137, 1986 contains the formula claimed to have been derived by Gurzadyan-Xue (in 2003).