Limiting the dimming of distant type Ia supernovae

Details Limiting the dimming of distant type Ia supernovae Limiting the dimming of distant type Ia supernovae

2004-10-21

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0410501v2

JCAP 0502 (2005) 005

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

19 pages, 11 figures Matches version accepted in JCAP. Some corrections due to minor bug in simulations, major conclusions unc

Scientific paper

10.1088/1475-7516/2005/02/005

Distant supernovae have been observed to be fainter than what is expected in a matter dominated universe. The most likely explanation is that the universe is dominated by an energy component with negative pressure -- dark energy. However, there are several astrophysical processes that could, in principle, affect the measurements and in order to be able to take advantage of the growing supernova statistics, the control of systematic effects is crucial. We discuss two of these; extinction due to intergalactic grey dust and dimming due to photon-axion oscillations and show how their effect on supernova observations can be constrained using observed quasar colours and spectra. For a wide range of intergalactic dust models, we are able to rule out any dimming larger than 0.2 magnitudes for a type Ia supernova at z=1. The corresponding limit for intergalactic Milky Way type dust is 0.03 mag. For the more speculative model of photons mixing with axions, we find that the effect is independent of photon energy for certain combinations of parameter values and a dimming as large as 0.6 magnitudes cannot be ruled out. These effects can have profound implications for the possibility of constraining dark energy properties using supernova observations.

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