Model-independent estimations for the curvature from standard candles and clocks

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to estimate the universe's spatial curvature using standard candles and clocks without relying on specific cosmological models, providing results consistent with a flat universe.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, model-independent approach to constrain spatial curvature from supernova and clock data, avoiding assumptions about cosmology or priors.

Findings

Constraints on curvature: Ω_K ≈ -0.045 to -0.140 with uncertainties

Results are consistent with a spatially flat universe

Method achieves competitive precision compared to other model-independent approaches

Abstract

Model-independent estimations for the spatial curvature not only provide a test for the fundamental Copernican principle assumption, but also can effectively break the degeneracy between curvature and dark energy properties. In this paper, we propose to achieve model-independent constraints on the spatial curvature from observations of standard candles and standard clocks, without assuming any fiducial cosmology and other priors. We find that, for the popular Union2.1 type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia ) observations, the spatial curvature is constrained to be $\Omega_K=-0.045_{-0.172}^{+0.176}$. For the latest joint light-curve analysis (JLA) of SNe Ia observations, we obtain $\Omega_K=-0.140_{-0.158}^{+0.161}$. It is suggested that these results are in excellent agreement with the spatially flat Universe. Moreover, compared to other approaches aiming for model-independent estimations of spatial curvature, this method also achieves constraints with competitive precision.