Quintessence in advanced gravity wave experiments

Abstract

Recent observations of distant type la supernovae light-curves suggest that the expansion of the Universe has recently begun to accelerate. A popular explanation of present accelerating expansion of the Universe is to assume that some part Qq of the matter-energy density is in the form of dark component called “the quintessence” with the equation of state pq = w()q with w > — 1. Determining the cosmic equation of state is, therefore, one of the greatest challenges of modern cosmology. Future generation of interferometrie gravitational wave detectors is hoped to detect the final stages of binary inspirals. The sources probed by such experiments are of extragalactic origin and the observed chirp mass can be translated into the redshift of the source. Moreover, the luminosity distance is a direct observable in such experiments. This creates the possibility to establish a new kind of cosmological tests, supplementary to more standard ones. In this paper we review the standard methods of probing the dark energy, introduce the basic concepts underlying the utility of advanced LIGO type interferometrie experiments in making cosmological inferences and we extend some recent results in this respect to the case of z varying equation of state[…]