Related papers: Probing homogeneity with standard candles
The luminosity distance can be used to determine the properties of large scale structure around the observer. To this purpose we develop a new inversion method to map luminosity distance to a LTB metric based on the use of the exact…
The cosmological standard model at present is widely accepted as containing mainly things we do not understand. In particular the appearance of a Cosmological Constant, or dark energy, is puzzling. This was first inferred from the Hubble…
Standard candles are one of the most important tools to study the universe. In this paper, the constraints of standards candles on the cosmological parameters are estimated for different cases. The dependence of the constraints on the…
When Type Ia supernovae are used to infer cosmological parameters, their luminosities are compared to those from a homogeneous cosmology. In this note we propose a test to examine to what degree SN Ia have been observed on lines of sight…
We review some results of the past 12 years derived from optical and infrared photometry of Type Ia supernovae. A combination of optical and infrared photometry allows us to determine accurately the extinction along the line of sight. The…
The luminosity-redshift relation of cosmological standard candles provides information about the relative energy composition of our Universe. In particular, the observation of type Ia supernovae up to redshift of z~2 indicate a universe…
The residuals of the distance moduli of Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) relative to a Hubble diagram fit contain information about the inhomogeneity of the universe, due to weak lensing magnification by foreground matter. By correlating the…
Although Type Ia supernova cosmology has now reached a mature state, it is important to develop as many independent methods as possible to understand the true nature of dark energy. Recent studies have shown that Type II supernovae (SNe II)…
We investigate the use of type Ic Super Luminous Supernovae as standardizable candles and distance indicators. Their appeal as cosmological probes stems from their remarkable peak luminosities, hot blackbody temperatures and bright…
Our recent estimates of galaxy counts and the luminosity density in the near-infrared (Keenan et al. 2010, 2012) indicated that the local universe may be under-dense on radial scales of several hundred megaparsecs (Mpc). Such a large-scale…
The coming era of large photometric wide-field surveys will increase the detection rate of supernovae by orders of magnitude. Such numbers will restrict spectroscopic follow-up in the vast majority of cases, and hence new methods based…
The cosmic curvature, a fundamental parameter for cosmology could hold deep clues to inflation and cosmic origins. We propose an improved model-independent method to constrain the cosmic curvature by combining the constructed Hubble diagram…
We investigate the feasibility of reconstructing the radial intensity profile of extended stellar sources by inverting their microlensed light curves. Using a simple, linear, limb darkening law as an illustration, we show that the intensity…
We investigate the possibility of measuring the Hubble constant, the fractional energy density components and the equation of state parameter of the ``dark energy'' using lensed multiple images of high-redshift supernovae. With future…
We investigate the effect of small scale inhomogeneities on standard candle observations, such as type Ia supernovae (SNe) observations. Existence of the small scale inhomogeneities may cause a tension between SNe observations and other…
Despite vast improvements in the measurement of the cosmological parameters, the nature of dark energy and an accurate value of the Hubble constant (H$_0$) in the Hubble-Lema\^itre law remain unknown. To break the current impasse, it is…
The [O III] 5007 Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function (PNLF) is an excellent extragalactic standard candle. In theory, the PNLF method should not work at all, since the luminosities of the brightest planetary nebulae (PNe) should be highly…
On-going projects to discover Type Ia supernovae at redshifts z = 0.3 - 1, coupled with improved techniques to narrow the dispersion in SN Ia peak magnitudes, have renewed the prospects for determining the cosmic deceleration parameter q_0.…
Gravitational lensing induces significant errors in the measured distances to high-redshift standard candles and standard sirens such as type-Ia supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and merging supermassive black hole binaries. There will…
The actual knowledge of the structure and future evolution of our universe is based on the use of cosmological models, which can be tested through the so-called 'probes', namely astrophysical phenomena, objects or structures with peculiar…