Constraints on Cardassian Expansion

Abstract

High redshift supernovae and Cosmic Microwave Background data are used to constrain the Cardassian expansion model (Freese & Lewis 2002), a cosmology in which a modification to the Friedmann equation gives rise to a flat, matter-dominated Universe which is currently undergoing a phase of accelerated expansion. In particular, the precision of the positions of the Doppler peaks in the CMB angular power spectrum provided by WMAP tightly constrains the cosmology. The available parameter space is further constrained by various high redshift supernova datasets taken from Tonry et al. (2003), a sample of 230 supernovae collated from the literature, in which fits to the distance and extinction have been recomputed where possible and a consistent zero-point has been applied. In addition, the Cardassian model can also be loosely constrained by inferred upper limits on the epoch at which the Cardassian term in the modified Friedmann equation begins to dominate the expansion (z_eq). Using these methods, a Cardassian cosmology is constrained at the 2 sigma level to 0.19 1, as opposed to the supernova data which supports a high-Omega_m, low-n cosmology.