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Findings of the Joint Dark Energy Mission Figure of Merit Science Working Group

Andreas Albrecht, Luca Amendola, Gary Bernstein, Douglas Clowe, Daniel Eisenstein, Luigi Guzzo, Christopher Hirata, Dragan Huterer, Robert Kirshner, Edward Kolb, Robert Nichol

Abstract

These are the findings of the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) Figure of Merit (FoM) Science Working Group (SWG), the FoMSWG. JDEM is a space mission planned by NASA and the DOE for launch in the 2016 time frame. The primary mission is to explore the nature of dark energy. In planning such a mission, it is necessary to have some idea of knowledge of dark energy in 2016, and a way to quantify the performance of the mission. In this paper we discuss these issues.

Findings of the Joint Dark Energy Mission Figure of Merit Science Working Group

Abstract

These are the findings of the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) Figure of Merit (FoM) Science Working Group (SWG), the FoMSWG. JDEM is a space mission planned by NASA and the DOE for launch in the 2016 time frame. The primary mission is to explore the nature of dark energy. In planning such a mission, it is necessary to have some idea of knowledge of dark energy in 2016, and a way to quantify the performance of the mission. In this paper we discuss these issues.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 44 sections, 35 equations, 2 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. The Unknown Nature of Dark Energy
  2. Primary Dark Energy (the Right-Hand-Side of Einstein's equations)
  3. Einstein's Cosmological Constant
  4. Quintessence Models
  5. Modification of General Relativity (the Left-Hand Side of Einstein's Equations)
  6. Further Alternatives
  7. The Task Before Us
  8. The Fisher Information Matrix
  9. Fisher Matrix Manipulations
  10. Priors
  11. Projection onto new variables
  12. Marginalization
  13. The Fiducial Cosmological Model
  14. Modeling the dark-energy equation of state parameter $w$
  15. Format of the Fisher Matrix
  16. ...and 29 more sections

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: An example of the first principal component for individual techniques, and all of the techniques combined.
  • Figure 2: An example of how one might present a graph of the increase in knowledge of the evolution of dark energy from a JDEM mission, normalized to the pre-JDEM knowledge. The data points shown in this figure do not correspond to any proposed JDEM, but invented merely to illustrate an example graph.