Bayesian model comparison in cosmology with Population Monte Carlo

Understand

We use Bayesian model selection techniques to test extensions of the standard flat LambdaCDM paradigm.

• Dark-energy and curvature scenarios, and primordial perturbation models are considered.
• To that end, we calculate the Bayesian evidence in favour of each model using Population Monte Carlo (PMC), a new adaptive sampling technique which was recently applied in a cosmological context.
• The Bayesian evidence is immediately available from the PMC sample used for parameter estimation without further computational effort, and it comes with an associated error evaluation.