2014/05/10 by Jun-Jie Wei, Xue-Feng Wu, Fulvio Melia · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Gravitation #Large Synoptic Survey Telescope #Lens (geology) #Optics #Physics #Sample (material) #Telescope #Theoretical physics #Universe #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/788/2/190
26 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2014/05/10 · openalex publication_date 2014/06/06 · arxiv updated 2015/06/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The use of time-delay gravitational lenses to examine the cosmological expansion introduces a new standard ruler with which to test theoretical models. The sample suitable for this kind of work now includes 12 lens systems, which have thus far been used solely for optimizing the parameters of ΛCDM. In this paper, we broaden the base of support for this new, important cosmic probe by using these observations to carry out a one-on-one comparison between competing models. The currently available sample indicates a likelihood of ∼70%–80% that the R h = ct universe is the correct cosmology versus ∼20%–30% for the standard model. This possibly interesting result reinforces the need to greatly expand the sample of time-delay lenses, e.g., with the successful implementation of the Dark Energy Survey, the VST ATLAS survey, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. In anticipation of a greatly expanded catalog of time-delay lenses identified with these surveys, we have produced synthetic samples to estimate how large they would have to be in order to rule out either model at a ∼99.7% confidence level. We find that if the real cosmology is ΛCDM, a sample of ∼150 time-delay lenses would be sufficient to rule out R h = ct at this level of accuracy, while ∼1000 time-delay lenses would be required to rule out ΛCDM if the real universe is instead R h = ct . This difference in required sample size reflects the greater number of free parameters available to fit the data with ΛCDM.