Learning from the scatter in type Ia supernovae

2005/11/02 by Scott Dodelson, Alberto Vallinotto
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.74.063515

published as Phys.Rev.D74:063515,2006 · 4 pages, 3 figures

arxiv created 2005/11/02 · openalex publication_date 2006/09/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Type Ia Supernovae are standard candles so their mean apparent magnitude has been exploited to learn about the redshift-distance relationship. Besides intrinsic scatter in this standard candle, additional scatter is caused by gravitational magnification by large scale structure. Here we probe the dependence of this dispersion on cosmological parameters and show that information about the amplitude of clustering, \ensuremathσ₈, is contained in the scatter. In principle, it will be possible to constrain \ensuremathσ₈ to within 5% with observations of 2000 Type Ia Supernovae. We identify three sources of systematic error---evolution of intrinsic scatter, baryon contributions to lensing, and non-Gaussianity of lensing---which will make this measurement difficult.

Citations

• Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 High‐Redshift Supernovae
• The Rate of Type Ia Supernovae at High Redshift
• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• Constraints on the primordial power spectrum from high-resolution Lyman α forest spectra and WMAP
• Cosmological parameter analysis including SDSS Lyαforest and galaxy bias: Constraints on the primordial spectrum of fluctuations, neutrino mass, and dark energy