An Improved Method to Measure the Cosmic Curvature

Understand

In this paper, we propose an improved model-independent method to constrain the cosmic curvature by combining the most recent Hubble parameter $H(z)$ and supernovae Ia (SNe Ia) data.

• Based on the $H(z)$ data, we first use the model-independent smoothing technique, Gaussian processes, to construct distance modulus $\mu_{H}(z)$, which is susceptible to the cosmic curvature parameter $\Omega_{k}$.
• In contrary to previous studies, the light-curve fitting parameters, which account for distance estimation of SN ($\mu_{SN}(z)$), are set free to investigate whether $\Omega_{k}$ has a dependence on them.
• By comparing $\mu_{H}(z)$ to $\mu_{SN}(z)$, we put limits on $\Omega_{k}$.