Improved constraints on the dark energy equation of state using Gaussian processes

TL;DR

This study uses Gaussian processes with updated data to tightly constrain the dark energy equation of state and examines how cosmological parameters influence these reconstructions, supporting recent local H0 measurements.

Contribution

It introduces an improved GP-based method with new data to better constrain the dark energy EoS and analyzes the effects of key cosmological parameters on these reconstructions.

Findings

Tighter constraints on dark energy EoS using combined data.

Variable H0 significantly influences EoS reconstructions.

Results support the local H0 measurement by Riess et al.

Abstract

We perform a comprehensive study of the dark energy equation of state (EoS) utilizing the model-independent Gaussian processes (GP). Using a combination of the Union 2.1 data set, the 30 newly added H(z) cosmic chronometer data points and Planck's shift parameter, we modify the usual GaPP code and provide a tighter constraint on the dark energy EoS than the previous literature about GP reconstructions. Subsequently, we take the "controlling variable method" to investigate directly the effects of variable matter density parameter $\Omega_{m0}$, variable cosmic curvature $\Omega_{k0}$ and variable Hubble constant $H_0$ on the dark energy EoS, respectively. We find that too small or large $\Omega_{m0}$, $\Omega_{k0}$ and $H_0$ are all disfavored by our GP reconstructions based on current cosmological observations. Subsequently, we find that variable $\Omega_{m0}$ and $\Omega_{k0}$ affect the reconstructions of the dark energy EoS, but affect hardly the reconstructions of the normalized comoving distance $D(z)$ and its derivatives $D'(z)$ and $D"(z)$. However, variable $H_0$ affects the reconstructions of the dark energy EoS by affecting obviously those of $D(z), D'(z)$ and $D"(z)$. Furthermore, we find that the results of our reconstructions support substantially the recent local measurement of $H_0$ reported by Riess et al.