Anisotropy of the Universe via the Pantheon supernovae sample revisited

Abstract

We employ the hemisphere comparison (HC) method and the dipole fitting (DF) method to investigate the cosmic anisotropy in the recently released Pantheon sample of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and five combinations among Pantheon. For the HC method, we find the maximum anisotropy level in the full Pantheon sample is ${\mathrm{AL}}_{max}=0.361\pm 0.070$ and corresponding direction $(l,b)=({123.05^{\circ }}_{-4.22^{\circ }}^{+11.25^{\circ }},{4.78^{\circ }}_{-8.36^{\circ }}^{+1.80^{\circ }})$. A robust check shows the statistical significance of maximum anisotropy level is about $2.1\sigma$. We also find that the Low-$z$ and SNLS subsamples have decisive impact on the overall anisotropy while other three subsamples have little impact. Moreover, the anisotropy level map significantly rely on the inhomogeneous distribution of SNe Ia in the sky. For the DF method, we find the dipole anisotropy in the Pantheon sample is very weak. The dipole magnitude is constrained to be less than $1.16\times 10^{-3}$ at $95\%$ confidence level. However, the dipole direction is well inferred by MCMC method and it points towards $(l,b)=({306.00^{\circ }}_{-125.01^{\circ }}^{+82.95^{\circ }},{-34.20^{\circ }}_{-54.93^{\circ }}^{+16.82^{\circ }})$. This direction is very close to the axial direction to the plane of SDSS subsample. It may imply that SDSS subsample is the decisive part to the dipole anisotropy in the full Pantheon sample. All these facts imply that the cosmic anisotropy found in Pantheon sample significantly rely on the inhomogeneous distribution of SNe Ia in the sky. More homogeneous distribution of SNe Ia is necessary to search for a more convincing cosmic anisotropy.

12 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, MNRAS accepted

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• Machine learning constraints on deviations from general relativity from the large scale structure of the Universe
• The Hubble Tension, The $M$ Crisis of Late Time $H(z)$ Deformation Models and the Reconstruction of Quintessence Lagrangians
• Consistency of Pantheon+ supernovae with a large-scale isotropic universe
• Concerns about the reliability of publicly available SNe Ia data
• $\Lambda$CDM cosmology with a quiescent anisotropy in a higher dimensional steady state universe