Scrutinizing Exotic Cosmological Models Using ESSENCE Supernova Data Combined with Other Cosmological Probes

The first cosmological results from the ESSENCE supernova survey (Wood-Vasey\net al. 2007) are extended to a wider range of cosmological models including\ndynamical dark energy and non-standard cosmological models. We fold in a\ngreater number of external data sets such as the recent Higher-z release of\nhigh-redshift supernovae (Riess et al. 2007) as well as several complementary\ncosmological probes. Model comparison statistics such as the Bayesian and\nAkaike information criteria are applied to gauge the worth of models. These\nstatistics favor models that give a good fit with fewer parameters.\n Based on this analysis, the preferred cosmological model is the flat\ncosmological constant model, where the expansion history of the universe can be\nadequately described with only one free parameter describing the energy content\nof the universe. Among the more exotic models that provide good fits to the\ndata, we note a preference for models whose best-fit parameters reduce them to\nthe cosmological constant model.\n