Limitations in using luminosity distance to determine the equation of state of the universe

Abstract

Supernova searches have been been suggested as a method for determining precisely the current value and time variation of the equation of state, $w$, of the dark energy component responsible for the accelerated expansion of the Universe. We show that the method is fundamentally limited by the fact that luminosity dista nce depends on $w$ through a multiple integral relation that smears out information about $w$ and its time variatio n. The effect degrades the resolution of $w$ that can be obtained from current d ata.

Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures; corrected figure 1 (compared to preprint and published versions) and minor changes to text