# Brief Note: Analytical Fit to the Luminosity Distance for Flat Cosmologies with a Cosmological Constant

## 1 Introduction

It is presently fashionable to consider spatially flat cosmological models with a cosmological constant (Ostriker and Steinhardt 1995). Several projects are underway to measure the magnitude of the cosmological constant, usually based on the luminosity-distance (Perlmutter et al. 1997), the angular-diameter distance (Pen 1997), or volume-distance (Kochanek 1996). Unfortunately, these distances are only expressible in terms of Elliptic functions (Eisenstein 1997). In order to simplify the repeated computation of difficult transcendental functions or numerical integrals, we present a fitting formula with the following properties:

1. it is exact for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_01^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_00^+`$ at all redshifts.
2. The relative error tends to zero as $`z\mathrm{}`$ for any value of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$.
3. For the range $`0.2\mathrm{\Omega }_01`$, the relative error is less than $`0.4\%`$.
4. For any choice of parameters, the relative error is always less than $`4\%`$.

Without further ado, the luminosity distance is given as:

$`d_L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c}{H_0}}(1+z)\left[\eta (1,\mathrm{\Omega }_0)\eta ({\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+z}},\mathrm{\Omega }_0)\right]`$   
$`\eta (a,\mathrm{\Omega }_0)`$ $`=`$ $`2\sqrt{s^3+1}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a^4}}0.1540{\displaystyle \frac{s}{a^3}}+0.4304{\displaystyle \frac{s^2}{a^2}}+0.19097{\displaystyle \frac{s^3}{a}}+0.066941s^4\right]^{\frac{1}{8}}`$   
$`s^3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1\mathrm{\Omega }_0}{\mathrm{\Omega }_0}}.`$ (1)   
We have used the Hubble constant $`H_0`$, and the pressureless matter content $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. We recall that an object of luminosity $`L`$ has flux $`F=L/(4\pi d_L^2)`$.

## 2 Approximation

Spatial flatness allows us to rewrite the Friedman-Robertson-Walker metric as a conformally flat spacetime

$$ds^2=a^2(d\eta ^2+dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }).$$
(2)   
$`\eta `$ is the conformal time, and $`r`$ is the comoving distance. We have set the speed of light $`c=1`$. The scale factor $`a`$ can be normalized in terms of the redshift $`a1/(1+z)`$. The Friedman equations determine

$$\left(\frac{da}{d\eta }\right)^2=a\mathrm{\Omega }_0+a^4\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }$$
(3)   
where spatial flatness requires $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=1`$. A change of variables to $`u=as`$ where $`s^3=(1\mathrm{\Omega }_0)/\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ allows us to express (3) parameter free

$$\eta =\sqrt{\frac{s^3+1}{s}}_0^{as}\frac{du}{\sqrt{u^4+u}}.$$
(4)   
We can asymptotically approximate (4) as

$$\eta _1=2\sqrt{\frac{s^3+1}{s}}\left[u^n+n(2X)^{2n+1}u^1+(2X)^{2n}\right]^{\frac{1}{2n}}$$
(5)   
where $`X(_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑u/\sqrt{u^4+u})^1=3\sqrt{\pi }/(\mathrm{\Gamma }[\frac{1}{6}]\mathrm{\Gamma }[\frac{1}{3}])0.3566`$. $`n`$ is a free parameter, and at this stage a choice of $`n=3`$ approximates all distances to better than $`14\%`$ relative accuracy. Equation (5) satisfies the following conditions: 1. it converges to (4) as $`u0`$ and $`u\mathrm{}`$. 2. Its derivative converges to the derivative of $`\eta `$ as $`u\mathrm{}`$. To improve on (5) we consider a polynomial expansion of $`u^1`$ in the denominator with two free parameters by setting $`n=4`$:

$$\stackrel{~}{\eta }=2\sqrt{\frac{s^3+1}{s}}\left[u^4+c_1u^3+c_2u^2+4(2X)^9u^1+(2X)^8\right]^{1/8}.$$
(6)   
We will now choose the coefficients $`c_1,c_2`$ to minimize the relative error in the approximate luminosity distance $`\stackrel{~}{d}_L`$,

$$e_{\mathrm{}}(\stackrel{~}{d}_Ld_L)/d_L_{\mathrm{}}$$
(7)   
where the subscript $`\mathrm{}`$ indicates the infinity norm, i.e. the maximal value over the domain. The error in (7) tends to be dominated by $`z=0`$ (see for example Figure 2), for which we can express

$$e_{\mathrm{}}=\sqrt{u^4+u}\frac{d\stackrel{~}{\eta }}{du}1_{\mathrm{}}.$$
(8)   
Globally optimizing (8) allows us to reduce the error to about $`2\%`$. But we choose the following trade-off for current cosmological parameters: We want to minimize (8) over the range $`0.2\mathrm{\Omega }_01`$, which covers the popularly considered parameter space. In that range, we find through a non-linear equation solver that $`c_1=0.1540`$ and $`c_2=0.4304`$. This allows us to trade the global error of $`2\%`$ for a global error of $`4\%`$, while reducing the error in the range of interest to $`0.4\%`$. The global error surface plot is shown in Figure 2. The error at $`z0`$ is shown in Figure 1. At small $`z`$, any errors in $`\stackrel{~}{\eta }`$ are amplified, even though the global errors in $`\eta (z)`$ are generally significantly smaller. Figure (3) shows the fit for the conformal time $`\stackrel{~}{\eta }`$ and its residual, which is accurate to $`0.2\%`$ globally.

One can always express the luminosity distance as a power series expansion around $`z=0`$ using Equations (1) and (4). For a flat universe, one obtains

$$\frac{H_0}{c}d_L=z+\left(1\frac{3}{4}\mathrm{\Omega }_0\right)z^2+(9\mathrm{\Omega }_010)\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_0}{8}z^3+\mathrm{}$$
(9)   
The series converges only slowly for $`z1`$: even when expanded to sixth order in $`z`$, the maximal relative error in the interval $`0<z<1`$ and $`0.2<\mathrm{\Omega }_0<1`$ using the series expansion in (9) is 37%.

## 3 Conclusion

We have presented a simple algebraic approximation to the luminosity distance $`d_L`$ and the proper angular diameter distance $`d_A=d_L/(1+z)^2`$ in a flat universe with pressureless matter and a cosmological constant.