Model independent evidence for dark energy evolution from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

Abstract

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) allow us to determine the expansion history of the Universe, thereby shedding light on the nature of dark energy. Recent observations of BAO's in the SDSS DR9 and DR11 have provided us with statistically independent measurements of $H(z)$ at redshifts of 0.57 and 2.34, respectively. We show that these measurements can be used to test the cosmological constant hypothesis in a model independent manner by means of an improved version of the $Om$ diagnostic. Our results indicate that the SDSS DR11 measurement of $H(z) = 222 \pm 7$ km/sec/Mpc at $z = 2.34$, when taken in tandem with measurements of $H(z)$ at lower redshifts, imply considerable tension with the standard $\Lambda$CDM model. Our estimation of the new diagnostic $Omh^2$ from SDSS DR9 and DR11 data, namely $Omh^2 \approx 0.122 \pm 0.01$, which is equivalent to $\Omega_{0m}h^2$ for the spatially flat $\Lambda$CDM model, is in tension with the value $\Omega_{0m}h^2 = 0.1426 \pm 0.0025$ determined for $\Lambda$CDM from Planck+WP. This tension is alleviated in models in which the cosmological constant was dynamically screened (compensated) in the past. Such evolving dark energy models display a pole in the effective equation of state of dark energy at high redshifts, which emerges as a smoking gun test for these theories.