Optimal Supernova Search Strategies.pdfVIP

Optimal Supernova Search Strategies Dragan Huterer1 and Michael S. Turner1,2,3 1 Department of Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago IL 60637, USA 2 Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago IL 60637, USA 3 Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia IL 60510-0500, USA 0 0 0 Abstract. Recent use of Type Ia supernovae to measure acceleration of the universe 2 has motivated questions regarding their optimal use to constrain cosmological param- n eters ΩM , ΩΛ and wQ . In this work we address the question: what is the optimal u distribution of supernovae in redshift in order to best constrain the cosmological pa- J rameters? The solution to this problem is not only of theoretical interest, but can be 8 useful in planning supernova searches. Using the Fisher matrix formalism we show that 2 the error ellipsoid corresponding to N parameters (for N = 1, 2, 3) has the smallest volume if the supernovae are located at N discrete redshifts, with equal number of su- 1 pernovae at each redshift and with one redshift always being the maximum one probed. v Including marginalization over the “nuisance parameter” M changes this result only 9 trivially. 1 4 6 0 1 Introduction 0 0 Recent use of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) as standard candles [1,2,3,4] pro- / h vided an opportunity to obtain the distance-re