Diagnostic Consistency Tests of the Concordance Cosmology

Abstract

The $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model faces increasingly significant and robust tensions among independent cosmological probes, prompting renewed scrutiny of its foundational assumptions. While General Relativity and the nature of dark energy are now routinely tested with cosmological surveys, less progress has been made testing the space-time geometry at the largest scales, and in particular testing the assumption that observables (distances, redshifs, expansion of space, etc.) on the largest scales are described by a single Friedmann-Lema\^ıtre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric. In order to enable such tests, we introduce a model-independent framework that combines successive derivatives of the angular diameter distance, $d_A(z)$, with the line-of-sight expansion rate, $\mathcal{H}(z)$, to expose the physical content of well-known FLRW consistency relations. This allows us to perform diagnostic tests of the large-scale geometry, that are free of assumptions about dark energy and the theory of gravity on large scales. In addition, we derive a new nonparametric estimator for the cosmic density field that is independent of the Friedmann equations. This enables qualitatively new, observationally accessible tests of the FLRW framework and provides a stringent, model-independent diagnostic for departures from standard cosmology using current and forthcoming distance and expansion rate measurements.

arXiv comment5 pages, 1 captioned figure. v2: 6 pages, text slightly elaborated and figures updated. No changes to results. Matches version accepted for publication in PRL. Joint submission with arXiv:2604.05822

References in corpus (23)

• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological analysis of the DR12 galaxy sample
• A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km/s/Mpc Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team
• DESI 2024 VI: Cosmological Constraints from the Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations
• The Pantheon+ Analysis: The Full Dataset and Light-Curve Release
• DESI DR2 Results II: Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Cosmological Constraints
• Reconstruction of dark energy and expansion dynamics using Gaussian processes
• A general test of the Copernican Principle
• Cosmological Tests of Gravity
• Inhomogeneity and the foundations of concordance cosmology
• Model independent tests of the standard cosmological model
• Testing backreaction effects with observations
• Model-independent test of the FLRW metric, the flatness of the Universe, and non-local measurement of $H_0{r}_{\mathrm{d}}$
• Apparent cosmic acceleration from type Ia supernovae
• Multipole decomposition of the general luminosity distance 'Hubble law' -- a new framework for observational cosmology
• Quantifying the accuracy of the Alcock-Paczynski scaling of baryon acoustic oscillation measurements
• Backreaction and FRW consistency conditions
• Improved null tests of $\Lambda$CDM and FLRW in light of DESI DR2
• A null test of the Cosmological Principle with BAO measurements
• A null test to probe the scale-dependence of the growth of structure as a test of General Relativity
• Baryon acoustic oscillation methods for generic curvature: Application to the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• The observable $E_g$ statistics
• Testing the equivalence principle across the Universe: a model-independent approach with galaxy multi-tracing
• A New Paradigm for Testing Gravity: Theory-Independent Constraints Using Data From All Astrophysical and Cosmological Scales