Measuring the velocity field from type Ia supernovae in an LSST-like sky survey

TL;DR

This paper assesses the potential of using type Ia supernovae observed in LSST-like surveys to measure the universe's velocity field and cosmological parameters through the velocity power spectrum, accounting for observational challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic simulation framework for supernova catalogs and evaluates the measurement precision of the velocity power spectrum in future surveys.

Findings

The velocity power spectrum can be measured with high precision in upcoming surveys.

The method is competitive for constraining parameters like σ8.

Peculiar velocities from supernovae are a promising cosmological probe.

Abstract

With the upcoming sky survey with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope a great sample of type Ia supernovae will be observed, allowing for a precise mapping of the velocity structure of the universe. Since the source of peculiar velocities is variations in the density field, cosmological parameters related to the matter distribution can subsequently be extracted from the velocity power spectrum. One way to quantify this is through the angular power spectrum of radial peculiar velocities on spheres at different redshifts. We investigate how well this observable can be measured, despite the problems caused by areas with no information. To obtain a realistic distribution of supernovae, we create mock supernova catalogs by using a semi-analytical code for galaxy formation on the merger trees extracted from N-body simulations. We measure the cosmic variance in the velocity power spectrum by repeating the procedure many times for differently located observers, and vary different aspects of the analysis, such as the observer environment, to see how this affects the measurements. Our results confirm the findings from earlier studies regarding the precision with which the angular velocity power spectrum can be determined in the near future. This level of precision has been found to imply, that the angular velocity power spectrum from type Ia supernovae is competitive in its potential to measure parameters such as $\sigma_8$. This makes the peculiar velocity power spectrum from type Ia supernovae a promising new observable, which deserves further attention.