Significant effects of weak gravitational lensing on determinations of the cosmology from Type Ia Supernovæ

Abstract

Significant adjustments to the values of the cosmological parameters estimated from high-redshift Type Ia Supernovædata are reported, almost an order of magnitude greater than previously found. They arise from the effects of weak gravitational lensing on observations of high-redshift sources. The lensing statistics used have been obtained from computations of the three-dimensional shear in a range of cosmological N-body simulations, from which it is estimated that cosmologies with an underlying deceleration parameter q_0 = -0.51 +0.03/-0.24 may be interpreted as having q_0 = -0.55 (appropriate to the currently popular cosmology with density parameter $Ω_M = 0.3$ and vacuum energy density parameter $Ω_Λ = 0.7$). In addition, the standard deviation expected from weak lensing for the peak magnitudes of Type Ia Supernovæat redshifts of 1 is expected to be approximately 0.078 magnitudes, and 0.185 magnitudes at redshift 2. This latter value is greater than the accepted intrinsic dispersion of 0.17 magnitudes. Consequently, the effects of weak lensing in observations of high-redshift sources must be taken properly into account.