No Arabic abstract
We describe and demonstrate the potential of a new and very efficient method for simulating certain classes of modified gravity theories, such as the widely studied $f(R)$ gravity models. High resolution simulations for such models are currently very slow due to the highly nonlinear partial differential equation that needs to be solved exactly to predict the modified gravitational force. This nonlinearity is partly inherent, but is also exacerbated by the specific numerical algorithm used, which employs a variable redefinition to prevent numerical instabilities. The standard Newton-Gauss-Seidel iterative method used to tackle this problem has a poor convergence rate. Our new method not only avoids this, but also allows the discretised equation to be written in a form that is analytically solvable. We show that this new method greatly improves the performance and efficiency of $f(R)$ simulations. For example, a test simulation with $512^3$ particles in a box of size $512 , mathrm{Mpc}/h$ is now 5 times faster than before, while a Millennium-resolution simulation for $f(R)$ gravity is estimated to be more than 20 times faster than with the old method. Our new implementation will be particularly useful for running very high resolution, large-sized simulations which, to date, are only possible for the standard model, and also makes it feasible to run large numbers of lower resolution simulations for covariance analyses. We hope that the method will bring us to a new era for precision cosmological tests of gravity.
We introduce and demonstrate the power of a method to speed up current iterative techniques for N-body modified gravity simulations. Our method is based on the observation that the accuracy of the final result is not compromised if the calculation of the fifth force becomes less accurate, but substantially faster, in high-density regions where it is weak due to screening. We focus on the nDGP model which employs Vainshtein screening, and test our method by running AMR simulations in which the solutions on the finer levels of the mesh (high density) are not obtained iteratively, but instead interpolated from coarser levels. We show that the impact this has on the matter power spectrum is below $1%$ for $k < 5h/{rm Mpc}$ at $z = 0$, and even smaller at higher redshift. The impact on halo properties is also small ($lesssim 3%$ for abundance, profiles, mass; and $lesssim 0.05%$ for positions and velocities). The method can boost the performance of modified gravity simulations by more than a factor of 10, which allows them to be pushed to resolution levels that were previously hard to achieve.
Model-independent constraints on modified gravity models hitherto exist mainly on linear scales. A recently developed formalism presented a consistent parameterisation that is valid on all scales. Using this approach, we perform model-independent modified gravity $N$-body simulations on all cosmological scales with a time-dependent $mu$. We present convergence tests of our simulations, and we examine how well existing fitting functions reproduce the non-linear matter power spectrum of the simulations. We find that although there is a significant variation in the accuracy of all of the fitting functions over the parameter space of our simulations, the ReACT framework delivers the most consistent performance for the matter power spectrum. We comment on how this might be improved to the level required for future surveys such as Euclid and the Vera Rubin Telescope (LSST). We also show how to compute weak-lensing observables consistently from the simulated matter power spectra in our approach, and show that ReACT also performs best when fitting the weak-lensing observables. This paves the way for a full model-independent test of modified gravity using all of the data from such upcoming surveys.
We present a description for setting initial particle displacements and field values for simulations of arbitrary metric theories of gravity, for perfect and imperfect fluids with arbitrary characteristics. We extend the Zeldovich Approximation to nontrivial theories of gravity, and show how scale dependence implies curved particle paths, even in the entirely linear regime of perturbations. For a viable choice of Effective Field Theory of Modified Gravity, initial conditions set at high redshifts are affected at the level of up to 5% at Mpc scales, which exemplifies the importance of going beyond {Lambda}-Cold Dark Matter initial conditions for modifications of gravity outside of the quasi-static approximation. In addition, we show initial conditions for a simulation where a scalar modification of gravity is modelled in a Lagrangian particle-like description. Our description paves the way for simulations and mock galaxy catalogs under theories of gravity beyond the standard model, crucial for progress towards precision tests of gravity and cosmology.
Chameleon scalar fields can screen their associated fifth forces from detection by changing their mass with the local density. These models are an archetypal example of a screening mechanism, and have become an important target for both cosmological surveys and terrestrial experiments. In particular there has been much recent interest in searching for chameleon fifth forces in the laboratory. It is known that the chameleon force is less screened around non-spherical sources, but only the field profiles around a few simple shapes are known analytically. In this work we introduce a numerical code that solves for the chameleon field around arbitrary shapes with azimuthal symmetry placed in a spherical vacuum chamber. We find that deviations from spherical symmetry can increase the chameleon acceleration experienced by a test particle by up to a factor of $sim 3$, and that the least screened objects are those which minimize some internal dimension.
We use N-body simulation to study the structure formation in the Cubic Galileon Gravity model where along with the usual kinetic and potential term we also have a higher derivative self-interaction term. We find that the large scale structure provides a unique constraining power for this model. The matter power spectrum, halo mass function, galaxy-galaxy weak lensing signal, marked density power spectrum as well as count in cell are measured. The simulations show that there are less massive halos in the Cubic Galileon Gravity model than corresponding $Lambda$CDM model and the marked density power spectrum in these two models are different by more than $10%$. Furthermore, the Cubic Galileon model shows significant differences in voids compared to $Lambda$CDM. The number of low density cells is far higher in the Cubic Galileon model than that in the $Lambda$CDM model. Therefore, it would be interesting to put constraints on this model using future large scale structure observations, especially in void regions.