Pratyusava Baral

Career Stage
Student (postgraduate)
Poster Abstract

Gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binary mergers along with an electromagnetic counterpart has the potential to shed `light' on the nature of dark energy in the intermediate redshift regime. An accurate measurement of dark energy parameters at intermediate redshift is extremely essential to improve our understanding of dark energy, and to possibly resolve couple of tensions involving cosmological parameters. We present a Fisher matrix forecast analysis in the context of eLISA to predict the errors for three different cases: the non-interacting dark energy with constant and evolving equation of state (EoS), and interacting dark sectors with a generalized parametrization. In all three cases, we perform the analysis for two separate formalisms, namely, the standard EoS formalism and the model-independent null diagnostics using Om parametrization for a wide range of fiducial values in both phantom and non-phantom regions, in order to make a comparative analysis between the prospects of these two diagnostics in LISA. Our analysis reveals that it is wiser and more effective to probe null diagnostics instead of the standard EoS parameters for any possible signature of dark energy at intermediate redshift measurements like LISA.

Plain text summary
Slightly less than one-fourth of the Universe’s total energy budget is utilized in accelerating objects away from us. This energy is parameterized by a density parameter which states the amount and an equation of state (EoS) parameter which states the nature of this ‘dark’ energy. Studying the EoS parameter is of utmost importance to learn about the fate of Universe. To parametrize the Universe, we also need to know the amount (density parameter) of matter and the EoS parameter and the Hubble constant which is basically the measure of the age of the Universe. The measure of this parameter from the local Universe point at a model which is known as the ΛCDM model. Λ means that the dark energy is a cosmological constant and CDM means cold dark matter. (Major part of the matter content in our Universe is non-luminous which is known as dark matter. Cold means the matter interacts only gravitationally.) Using this model, an indirect measurement of Hubble constant from the very early Universe (Cosmic Microwave Background experiments) does not match with direct measurement from the late local Universe.

The discrepancy is primarily attributed to incorrect value of the EoS parameters. Thus more accurate direct measurements of EoS parameters are necessary. All measurements till date are from local Universe. The gravitational waves (GWs) emitted from supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) mergers detected at Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) give us a unique probe to study the middle Universe. LISA is a space base GW mission expected to fly by 2030s. The observations that we are taking about are primarily luminosity distance (a measure of cosmic distance) vs redshift (a proxy for time). The redshift measurements shall be primarily from spectroscopic or photometric observations in electromagnetic telescopes due to host galaxy mergers. However, there exists another problem. The errors in density parameters effect the values of the EoS parameters. To solve this problem Varun Sahni and his collaborators introduced a new novel null parameterization technique called Om, which can measure the EoS without reference to density parameters. This parameter actually depends on four redshift points which effectively eliminate the density parameters. This new parameterization technique when applied to present datasets of the local Universe show no deviation from ΛCDM. This motivates why we should probe middle redshifts.

Since we do not have measurements from LISA, a simple Fisher matrix analysis is presented. We have used three models to study the EoS parameters.
• 1 parameter model - Matter EoS is fixed at 0; Dark energy EoS has one free parameter.
• 2 parameter model - Matter EoS is fixed at 0; Dark energy EoS has two free parameters.
• 3 parameter model – Matter EoS is a free parameter. Dark energy EoS has two free parameters.
This three models have been studied using both standard and Om parameters. For all cases the errors in case of Om parameters are less than that of standard parameters by at least one order of magnitude. Thus, Om parameters are an excellent tool to probe the middle redshift region using GW observations with electromagnetic counterparts at LISA. For more details refer to arXiv: 2005.0Astrobiology1[astro-ph].

Poster Title
Prospects of Probing Dark Energy with eLISA: Standard versus Null Diagnostics
Tags
Astrophysics
Cosmology
Url
arXiv:2005.07461 [astro-ph.CO]