A comprehensive comparison of cosmological models from the latest observational data

ABSTRACT We carry out a detailed investigation of some popular cosmological models in light of the latest observational data, including the Union2.1 supernovae compilation, the baryon acoustic oscillation measurements from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey and the cosmic microwave background information from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe seven‐year observations, along with the observational Hubble parameter data. Based on the selection statistics of the models, such as the Akaike and the Bayesian information criteria, we compare different models to assess their worth. We do not assume a flat universe in the fitting. Our results show that the concordance Λ cold dark matter (CDM) model remains the best model to explain the data, while the Dvali–Gabadadze–Porrati model is clearly not favoured by the data. Among these models, the models whose parameters can reduce themselves to the ΛCDM model provide good fits to the data. These results indicate that for the current data, there is no obvious evidence to support the use of any more complex models over the simplest ΛCDM model.