Nontrivial Geometries: Bounds on the Curvature of the Universe

Understand

Probing the geometry of the universe is one of the most important endevours in cosmology.

• Current observational data from the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy (CMB), galaxy surveys and type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) strongly constrain the curvature of the universe to be close to zero for a universe dominated by a cosmological constant or dark energy with a constant equation of state.
• Here we investigate the role of cosmic priors on deriving these tight bounds on geometry, by considering a landscape motivated scenario with an oscillating curvature term.
• We perform a likelihood analysis of current data under such a model of non-trivial geometry and find that the uncertainties on curvature, and correspondingly on parameters of the matter and dark energy sectors, are larger.