No Arabic abstract
Joint lensing and dynamical mass profile determinations of galaxy clusters are an excellent tool to constrain modification of gravity at cosmological scales. However, search for tiny departures from General Relativity calls for an accurate control of the systematics affecting the method. In this analysis we concentrate on the systematics in the reconstruction of mass profiles from the dynamics of cluster member galaxies, while assuming that lensing provides unbiased mass profile reconstructions. In particular, in the case study of linear $f(R)$ gravity, we aim at veryfying whether in realistic simulations of cluster formation a spurious detection of departure from GR can be detected due to violation of the main assumptions (e.g. dynamical equilibrium and spherical symmetry) on which the method is based. We aim at identifying and calibrating the impact of those systematics by analyzing a set of Dark Matter halos taken from $Lambda$CDM N-body cosmological simulations performed with the GADGET-3 code. [...] If no selection criteria are applied, $sim 60%$ of clusters in a $Lambda$CDM Universe (where GR is assumed) produce a spurious detection of modified gravity. We find that the probability of finding cluster in agreement with GR predictions $P_{GR}$ mainly depends on the properties of the halos projected phase-space and on shape orientation of the cluster along the line-of-sight projection. We define two observational criteria which correlate with the probability to find clusters in agreement with GR predictions and which can be used to select [...] those objects that are more suitable for the application of the proposed method. In particular, we find that according to these criteria the percentage of spurious detection can be lowered down to $sim 20%$ in the best case. Our results are relevant in view of data that will be available with the next generation surveys.
We study degeneracies between parameters in some of the widely used parametrized modified gravity models. We investigate how different observables from a future photometric weak lensing survey such as LSST, correlate the effects of these parameters and to what extent the degeneracies are broken. We also study the impact of other degenerate effects, namely massive neutrinos and some of the weak lensing systematics, on the correlations.
We explore the cosmological implications of five modified gravity (MG) models by using the recent cosmological observational data, including the recently released SNLS3 type Ia supernovae sample, the cosmic microwave background anisotropy data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7-yr observations, the baryon acoustic oscillation results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 7, and the latest Hubble constant measurement utilizing the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. The MG models considered include the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati(DGP) model, two $f(R)$ models, and two $f(T)$ models. We find that compared with the $Lambda$CDM model, MG models can not lead to a appreciable reduction of the $chi^2_{min}$. The analysis of AIC and BIC shows that the simplest cosmological constant model($Lambda$CDM) is still most preferred by the current data, and the DGP model is strongly disfavored. In addition, from the observational constraints, we also reconstruct the evolutions of the growth factor in these models. We find that the current available growth factor data are not enough to distinguish these MG models from the $Lambda$CDM model.
We use high-precision kinematic and lensing measurements of the total mass profile of the dynamically relaxed galaxy cluster MACS J1206.2-0847 at $z=0.44$ to estimate the value of the ratio $eta=Psi/Phi$ between the two scalar potentials in the linear perturbed Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric.[...] Complementary kinematic and lensing mass profiles were derived from exhaustive analyses using the data from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) and the spectroscopic follow-up with the Very Large Telescope (CLASH-VLT). Whereas the kinematic mass profile tracks only the time-time part of the perturbed metric (i.e. only $Phi$), the lensing mass profile reflects the contribution of both time-time and space-space components (i.e. the sum $Phi+Psi$). We thus express $eta$ as a function of the mass profiles and perform our analysis over the radial range $0.5,Mpcle rle r_{200}=1.96,Mpc$. Using a spherical Navarro-Frenk-White mass profile, which well fits the data, we obtain $eta(r_{200})=1.01,_{-0.28}^{+0.31}$ at the 68% C.L. We discuss the effect of assuming different functional forms for mass profiles and of the orbit anisotropy in the kinematic reconstruction. Interpreting this result within the well-studied $f(R)$ modified gravity model, the constraint on $eta$ translates into an upper bound to the interaction length (inverse of the scalaron mass) smaller than 2 Mpc. This tight constraint on the $f(R)$ interaction range is however substantially relaxed when systematic uncertainties in the analysis are considered. Our analysis highlights the potential of this method to detect deviations from general relativity, while calling for the need of further high-quality data on the total mass distribution of clusters and improved control on systematic effects.
We present forecasted cosmological constraints from combined measurements of galaxy cluster abundances from the Simons Observatory and galaxy clustering from a DESI-like experiment on two well-studied modified gravity models, the chameleon-screened $f(R)$ Hu-Sawicki model and the nDGP braneworld Vainshtein model. A Fisher analysis is conducted using $sigma_8$ constraints derived from thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) selected galaxy clusters, as well as linear and mildly non-linear redshift-space 2-point galaxy correlation functions. We find that the cluster abundances drive the constraints on the nDGP model while $f(R)$ constraints are led by galaxy clustering. The two tracers of the cosmological gravitational field are found to be complementary, and their combination significantly improves constraints on the $f(R)$ in particular in comparison to each individual tracer alone. For a fiducial model of $f(R)$ with $text{log}_{10}(f_{R0})=-6$ and $n=1$ we find combined constraints of $sigma(text{log}_{10}(f_{R0}))=0.48$ and $sigma(n)=2.3$, while for the nDGP model with $n_{text{nDGP}}=1$ we find $sigma(n_{text{nDGP}})=0.087$. Around a fiducial General Relativity (GR) model, we find a $95%$ confidence upper limit on $f(R)$ of $f_{R0}leq5.68times 10^{-7}$. Our results present the exciting potential to utilize upcoming galaxy and CMB survey data available in the near future to discern and/or constrain cosmic deviations from GR.
The first multi-messenger gravitational wave event has had a transformative effect on the space of modified gravity models. In this paper we study the enhanced tests of gravity that are possible with a future set of gravitational wave standard siren events. We perform MCMC constraint forecasts for parameters in Horndeski scalar-tensor theories. In particular, we focus on the complementarity of gravitational waves with electromagnetic large-scale structure data from galaxy surveys. We find that the addition of fifty low redshift ($z lesssim 0.2$) standard sirens from the advanced LIGO network offers only a modest improvement (a factor 1.1 -- 1.3, where 1.0 is no improvement) over existing constraints from electromagnetic observations of large-scale structures. In contrast, high redshift (up to $z sim 10$) standard sirens from the future LISA satellite will improve constraints on the time evolution of the Planck mass in Horndeski theories by a factor $sim 5$. By simulating different scenarios, we find this improvement to be robust to marginalisation over unknown merger inclination angles and to variation between three plausible models for the merger source population.