What Do We Really Know about Cosmic Acceleration?
By C. Shapiro, M. Turner. 2005
133 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Essentially all of our knowledge of the acceleration history of the universe (even the discovery of the acceleration itself) is predicated on the validity of general relativity through the Friedmann equation. Assuming only a flat spacetime that is homogenous and isotropic on large scales and described by a metric theory of gravity, we use SNe Ia to analyze the acceleration history. We infer robust conclusions about cosmic acceleration that are independent of a particular parameterization of the acceleration history. Specifically, we find (1) very strong (5 σ) evidence for a period of acceleration, (2) strong evidence that the acceleration has not been constant, (3) evidence for an earlier period of deceleration, and (4) only weak evidence that the universe has been accelerating since z ~ 0.3.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/efd50391137a6b55ad8483b5cb47886114283aee
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Daniel J. Eisenstein
- A. Riess
- L. Hernquist
- P. Hopkins
- A. Filippenko
- S. Jha
- Christopher J. Conselice
- Mark Dickinson
Citations in the corpus
- New Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries of Type Ia Supernovae at z ≥ 1: Narrowing Constraints on the Early Behavior of Dark Energy (2006, background): “However, as shown by Shapiro & Turner (2006), different parameterizations of q zð Þ can lead to different redshifts for the transition and to different confidence levels for the epochs of acceleration and deceleration (although all appear sufficiently high to yield a robust conclusion similar to…”
- The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: measuring the cosmic expansion history using the Alcock-Paczynski test and distant supernovae (2011, methodology): “When the supernovae data are subject to model-independent non-parametric analysis, the evidence for accelerating expansion is much weaker (Wang & Tegmark 2005, Shapiro & Turner 2006, Shafieloo 2007, Sollerman et al. 2009, Shafieloo & Clarkson 2010).”
- Cosmic dynamics in the era of Extremely Large Telescopes (2008, background): “…Steinhardt 2001; Bassett, Corasaniti & Kunz 2004), these are conceptually undesirable features and several authors have pointed out the importance of taking a cosmographic, model-independent approach to determining the expansion history (e.g. John 2005; Wang & Tegmark 2005; Shapiro & Turner 2006).”