Constraining power of cosmological observables: blind redshift spots and optimal ranges

Abstract

A cosmological observable measured in a range of redshifts can be used as a probe of a set of cosmological parameters. Given the cosmological observable and the cosmological parameter, there is an optimum range of redshifts where the observable can constrain the parameter in the most effective manner. For other redshift ranges the observable values may be degenerate with respect to the cosmological parameter values and thus inefficient in constraining the given parameter. These are blind redshift ranges. We determine the optimum and the blind redshift ranges of cosmological observables with respect to the cosmological parameters: matter density parameter $\Omega_m$, equation of state parameter $w$ and a modified gravity parameter $g_a$ which parametrizes the evolution of an effective Newton's constant. We consider the observables: growth rate of matter density perturbations expressed through $f(z)$ and $f\sigma_8$, the distance modulus $\mu(z)$, Baryon Acoustic Oscillation observables $D_V(z) \times \frac{r_s^{fid}}{r_s}$, $H \times \frac{r_s}{r_s^{fid}}$ and $D_A \times \frac{r_s^{fid}}{r_s}$, $H(z)$ measurements and the gravitational wave luminosity distance. We introduce a new statistic $S_P^O(z)\equiv \frac{\Delta O}{\Delta P}(z) \cdot V_{eff}^{1/2}$, including the effective survey volume $V_{eff}$, as a measure of the constraining power of a given observable $O$ with respect to a cosmological parameter $P$ as a function of redshift $z$. We find blind redshift spots $z_b$ ($S_P^O(z_b)\simeq 0$) and optimal redshift spots $z_s$ ($S_P^O(z_s)\simeq max$) for these observables with respect to the parameters $\Omega_m$, $w$ and $g_a$. For $O=f\sigma_8$ and $P=(\Omega_{m},w,g_a)$ we find blind spots at $z_b\simeq(1,2,2.7)$ respectively and optimal (sweet) spots at $z_s=(0.5,0.8,1.2)$. Thus probing higher redshifts may be less effective than probing lower redshifts with higher accuracy.