In this paper, we introduce a new approach to a treatment of the gravitational effects (redshift, time delay and lensing) on the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies based on the Boltzmann equation. From the Liouvilles theorem in curved spacetime, the intensity of photons is conserved along a photon geodesic when non-gravitational scatterings are absent. Motivated by this fact, we derive a second-order line-of-sight formula by integrating the Boltzmann equation along a perturbed geodesic (curve) instead of a background geodesic (line). In this approach, the separation of the gravitational and intrinsic effects are manifest. This approach can be considered as a generalization of the remapping approach of CMB lensing, where all the gravitational effects can be treated on the same footing.
Redshift-space distortions (RSD) offer an attractive method to measure the growth of cosmic structure on large scales, and combining with the measurement of the cosmic expansion history, it can be used as cosmological tests of gravity. With the advent of future galaxy redshift surveys aiming at precisely measuring the RSD, an accurate modeling of RSD going beyond linear theory is a critical issue in order to detect or disprove small deviations from general relativity (GR). While several improved models of RSD have been recently proposed based on the perturbation theory (PT), the framework of these models heavily relies on GR. Here, we put forward a new PT prescription for RSD in general modified gravity models. As a specific application, we present theoretical predictions of the redshift-space power spectra in f(R) gravity model, and compare them with N-body simulations. Using the PT template that takes into account the effects of both modifications of gravity and RSD properly, we successfully recover the fiducial model parameter in N-body simulations in an unbiased way. On the other hand, we found it difficult to detect the scale dependence of the growth rate in a model-independent way based on GR templates.
We study the network of Type-I cosmic strings using the field-theoretic numerical simulations in the Abelian-Higgs model. For Type-I strings, the gauge field plays an important role, and thus we find that the correlation length of the strings is strongly dependent upon the parameter beta, the ratio between the self-coupling constant of the scalar field and the gauge coupling constant, namely, beta=lambda/2e^2. In particular, if we take the cosmic expansion into account, the network becomes densest in the comoving box for a specific value of beta for beta<1.
