Related papers: Probing Dark Energy with SNAP
The discovery of accelerated expansion using supernova surveys has been one of the most surprising discoveries in cosmology in the past ten years. Present and future surveys, among which SNLS, JDEM or LSST, are based on samples of a few…
The nature of dark energy can be probed not only through its equation of state, but also through its microphysics, characterized by the sound speed of perturbations to the dark energy density and pressure. As the sound speed drops below the…
We focus on uncertainties in supernova measurements, in particular of individual magnitudes and redshifts, to review to what extent supernovae measurements of the expansion history of the universe are likely to allow us to constrain a…
In this paper we review a part of the approaches that have been considered to explain the extraordinary discovery of the late time acceleration of the Universe. We discuss the arguments that have led physicists and astronomers to accept…
Supernova cosmology surveys are traditionally time consuming, especially for the critical spectroscopic data. However, a single spectrum at maximum light may provide accurate distance estimation if recent developments hold. This could open…
We use data from observational cosmology to put constraints on higher-dimensional extensions of general relativity in which the effective four-dimensional dark-energy density (or cosmological "constant") decays with time. In particular we…
I review the theoretical motivation for varying fundamental couplings and discuss how these measurements can be used to constrain a number of fundamental physics scenarios that would otherwise be inacessible to experiment. As a case study I…
The nature of dark energy, driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe, is one of the most important issues in modern astrophysics. In order to understand this phenomenon, we need precise astrophysical probes of the universal…
The unexpected faintness of high-redshift Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), as measured by two teams, has been interpreted as evidence that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. We review the current challenges to this interpretation…
The possibility of reconstructing the dark energy equation of state from variations in the fine structure constant is investigated for a class of models where the quintessence field is non-minimally coupled to the electromagnetic field. For…
By detecting redshift drift in the spectra of Lyman-$\alpha$ forest of distant quasars, Sandage-Loeb (SL) test directly measures the expansion of the universe, covering the "redshift desert" of $2 \lesssim z \lesssim5$. Thus this method is…
One of the key issues in cosmology is to establish the nature of dark energy, and to determine whether the equation of state evolves with time. When estimating this from distance measurements there is a degeneracy with the matter density.…
Several independent cosmological data, collected within the last twenty years, revealed the accelerated expansion rate of the Universe, usually assumed to be driven by the so called dark energy, which, according to recent estimates,…
Observations of high redshift supernovae imply an accelerating Universe which can only be explained by an unusual energy component such as vacuum energy or quintessence. To assess the ability of current and future supernova data to…
Constellation-X (Con-X) will carry out two powerful and independent sets of tests of dark energy based on X-ray observations of galaxy clusters, providing comparable accuracy to other leading dark energy probes. The first group of tests…
Statistical properties of gas absorption in high redshift quasars such as power spectrum and bispectrum allow one to determine the evolution of structure over the redshift range 2<z<4. Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will measure around…
Type Ia supernovae luminosities can be corrected to render them useful as standard candles able to probe the expansion history of the universe. This technique was successful applied to discover the present acceleration of the universe. As…
We study the utility of a large sample of type Ia supernovae that might be observed in an imaging survey that rapidly scans a large fraction of the sky for constraining dark energy. We consider information from the traditional luminosity…
We consider the efficacy of using luminosity distance measurements of deep redshift supernovae to discriminate between two forms of dark energy, quintessence (a scalar field with canonical kinetic terms rolling down a potential) and…
A mathematically motivated fitting function for analyzing supernovae distance-redshift data is suggested. It is pointed out that this function can be useful in analyzing SNAP data. To illustrate our method, we analyze current experimental…