Expressing the equation of state parameter in terms of the three dimensional cosmic shear

Abstract

We study the functional dependence of the spin-weighted angular moments of the two-point correlation function of the three dimensional cosmic shear on the expansion history of the universe. We first express the redshift dependent total equation of state parameter in terms of the growing mode of the gauge invariant metric perturbation in the conformal-Newtonian gauge for the case of adiabatic perturbations. We then express the redshift dependent angular moments of the shear two-point correlation function as an integral in terms of the metric perturbation. We present the final explicit expression for the case of a Harrison-Zeldovich spectrum of primordial perturbations. Our analysis is restricted to the linear regime. We use our results to make a preliminary study of the required sensitivity that will allow cosmic shear observations to add significant information about the expansion history of the universe.Comment: Final version to appear in JCAP. Substantial improvements include added preliminary numerial results and a realistic transfer functio