2004ApJ...603..365Z

Recent measurements of Type Ia supernovae, as well as other concordant observations, suggest that the expansion of our universe is accelerating. A dark energy component has usually been invoked as the most feasible mechanism for the acceleration. However, effects arising from possible extra dimensions can mimic dark energy through a modified Friedmann equation. In this work, we investigate some observational constraints on a scenario in which this modification is given by H²=(8πG/3)(ρ+Cρⁿ). We mainly focus our attention on the constraints from recent measurements of the dimensionless coordinate distances to Type Ia supernovae and Fanaroff-Riley Type IIb radio galaxies compiled by Daly & Djorgovski and the X-ray gas mass fractions in clusters of galaxies published by Allen et al. We obtain the confidence region on the power index n and the density parameter Ω_mof the universe from a combined analysis of these databases. We find that n=0.06^+0.22_–0.18 and Ω_m=0.30^+0.02_–0.02, at the 95.4% confidence level, which is consistent within the errors with the standard ΛCDM model. These parameter ranges give a universe whose expansion switches from deceleration to acceleration at a redshift between 0.52 to 0.73.