Constraining dark energy fluctuations with supernova correlations

Understand

We investigate constraints on dark energy fluctuations using type Ia supernovae.

• If dark energy is not in the form of a cosmological constant, that is if the equation of state is not equal to -1, we expect not only temporal, but also spatial variations in the energy density.
• Such fluctuations would cause local variations in the universal expansion rate and directional dependences in the redshift-distance relation.
• We present a scheme for relating a power spectrum of dark energy fluctuations to an angular covariance function of standard candle magnitude fluctuations.