Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2010.10292

Analyzing Pantheon SNeIa data in the context of Barrow's variable speed of light

Hoang Ky Nguyen
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

We analyze the Combined Pantheon Sample of Type Ia supernovae while allowing the velocity of light to vary as a function of the scale factor $c\propto a^{-\zeta}$, as initiated by Barrow [Phys. Rev. D 59, 043515 (1999)]. The variation in the velocity of light creates an effect akin to the refraction phenomenon which occurs for a wave traveling in a medium with varying speed of wave. We elucidate the role of the local scale of gravitationally-bound regions in assisting the refraction effect to manifest. The refraction effect alters the redshift formulae (Lemaitre, distance-vs-z, luminosity distance-vs-z) and warrants a new analysis of the Pantheon dataset. Upon a reformulation of the distance-redshift relations, we achieve a high-quality fit of the Pantheon dataset to the variable light speed approach; the fit is as robust as that obtained in the standard $\Lambda CDM$ model. We find that the Pantheon dataset is consistent with the variable light speed of the functional form: $a\propto t^{\mu}$ and $c\propto a^{1-1/\mu}$ with (i) the cosmic age $t_{0}\approx 13.9$ Gy as a free parameter, while $\mu$ is unspecified; and (ii) a monotonic variation in the local scale for gravitationally-bound objects (applicable to the emission sources and the Solar System-based apparatus/observer). Due to the agent in (ii), the high-z portion of the Pantheon dataset would produce an "effective" $H_{0}$ estimate which is 10 percent lower than the $H_{0}$ estimate obtained from the low-z portion of the dataset. We offer an alternative interpretation of the accelerating expansion by way of variable speed of light, and as a by-product of the agent uncovered in (ii), a tentative suggestion toward "resolving" the ongoing tension in the Hubble constant estimates.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcastro-ph.CO

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Hoang Ky Nguyen. 2020-10-20. Analyzing Pantheon SNeIa data in the context of Barrow's variable speed of light. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.10292

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗