Modified Gravity (MG) scenarios have been advocated to account for the dark energy phenomenon in the universe. These models predict departures from General Relativity on large cosmic scales that can be tested through a variety of probes such as observations of galaxy clusters among others. Here, we investigate the imprint of MG models on the internal mass distribution of cluster-like halos as probed by the dark matter halo sparsity. To this purpose we perform a comparative analysis of the properties of the halo sparsity using N-body simulation halo catalogs of a standard flat $Lambda$CDM model and MG scenarios from the DUSTGRAIN-pathfinder simulation suite. We find that the onset of the screening mechanism leaves a distinct signature in the redshift evolution of the ensemble average halos sparsity. Measurements of the sparsity of galaxy clusters from currently available mass estimates are unable to test MG models due to the large uncertainties on the cluster masses. We show that this should be possible in the future provided large cluster samples with cluster masses determined to better than $30%$ accuracy level.
We use a set of N-body simulations employing a modified gravity (MG) model with Vainshtein screening to study matter and halo hierarchical clustering. As test-case scenarios we consider two normal branch Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (nDGP) gravity models with mild and strong growth rate enhancement. We study higher-order correlation functions $xi_n(R)$ up to $n=9$ and associated hierarchical amplitudes $S_n(R)equivxi_n(R)/sigma(R)^{2n-2}$. We find that the matter PDFs are strongly affected by the fifth-force on scales up to $50h^{-1}$Mpc, and the deviations from GR are maximised at $z=0$. For reduced cumulants $S_n$, we find that at small scales $Rleq10h^{-1}$Mpc the MG is characterised by lower values, with the deviation growing from $7%$ in the reduced skewness up to even $40%$ in $S_5$. To study the halo clustering we use a simple abundance matching and divide haloes into thee fixed number density samples. The halo two-point functions are weakly affected, with a relative boost of the order of a few percent appearing only at the smallest pair separations ($rleq 5h^{-1}$Mpc). In contrast, we find a strong MG signal in $S_n(R)$s, which are enhanced compared to GR. The strong model exhibits a $>3sigma$ level signal at various scales for all halo samples and in all cumulants. In this context, we find that the reduced kurtosis to be an especially promising cosmological probe of MG. Even the mild nDGP model leaves a $3sigma$ imprint at small scales $Rleq3h^{-1}$Mpc, while the stronger model deviates from a GR-signature at nearly all scales with a significance of $>5sigma$. Since the signal is persistent in all halo samples and over a range of scales, we advocate that the reduced kurtosis estimated from galaxy catalogues can potentially constitute a strong MG-model discriminatory as well as GR self-consistency test.
Scalar fields coupled to gravity through the Ricci scalar have been considered both as dark matter candidates and as a possible modified gravity explanation for galactic dynamics. It has recently been demonstrated that the dynamics of baryonic matter in disk galaxies may be explained, in the absence of particle dark matter, by a symmetron scalar field that mediates a fifth force. The symmetron provides a concrete and archetypal field theory within which to explore how large a role modifications of gravity can play on galactic scales. In this article, we extend these previous works by asking whether the same symmetron field can explain the difference between the baryonic and lens masses of galaxies through a modification of gravity. We consider the possibilities for minimal modifications of the model and find that this difference cannot be explained entirely by the symmetron fifth force without extending the field content of the model. Instead, we are pushed towards a regime of parameter space where one scalar field both mediates a fifth force and stores enough energy density that it also contributes to the galaxys gravitational potential as a dark matter component, a regime which remains to be fully explored.
We propose a new cosmological framework in which the strength of the gravitational force acted on dark matter at late time can be weaker than that on the standard matter fields without introducing extra gravitational degrees of freedom. The framework integrates dark matter into a type-II minimally modified gravity that was recently proposed as a dark energy mimicker. The idea that makes such a framework possible consists of coupling a dark matter Lagrangian and a cosmological constant to the metric in a canonically transformed frame of general relativity (GR). On imposing a gauge fixing constraint, which explicitly breaks the temporal diffeomorphism invariance, we keep the number of gravitational degrees of freedom to be two, as in GR. We then make the inverse canonical transformation to bring the theory back to the original frame, where one can add the standard matter fields. This framework contains two free functions of time which specify the generating functional of the above mentioned canonical transformation and which are then used in order to realize desired time evolutions of both the Hubble expansion rate $H(z)$ and the effective gravitational constant for dark matter $G_{rm eff}(z)$. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide a new framework to address the two puzzles present in todays cosmology, i.e. the $H_0$ tension and the $S_8$ tension, simultaneously. When the dark matter is cold in this framework, we dub the corresponding cosmological model the V Canonical Cold Dark Matter (VCCDM), as the cosmological constant $Lambda$ in the standard $Lambda$CDM is replaced by a function $V(phi)$ of an auxiliary field $phi$ and the CDM is minimally coupled to the metric in a canonically transformed frame.
We introduce the idea of {it effective} dark matter halo catalog in $f(R)$ gravity, which is built using the {it effective} density field. Using a suite of high resolution N-body simulations, we find that the dynamical properties of halos, such as the distribution of density, velocity dispersion, specific angular momentum and spin, in the effective catalog of $f(R)$ gravity closely mimic those in the $Lambda$CDM model. Thus, when using effective halos, an $f(R)$ model can be viewed as a $Lambda$CDM model. This effective catalog therefore provides a convenient way for studying the baryonic physics, the galaxy halo occupation distribution and even semi-analytical galaxy formation in $f(R)$ cosmologies.
We present a new cosmological probe for galaxy clusters, the halo sparsity. This characterises halos in terms of the ratio of halo masses measured at two different radii and carries cosmological information encoded in the halo mass profile. Building upon the work of Balmes et al. (2014) we test the properties of the sparsity using halo catalogs from a numerical N-body simulation of ($2.6$ Gpc/h)$^3$ volume with $4096^3$ particles. We show that at a given redshift the average sparsity can be predicted from prior knowledge of the halo mass function. This provides a quantitative framework to infer cosmological parameter constraints using measurements of the sparsity of galaxy clusters. We show this point by performing a likelihood analysis of synthetic datasets with no systematics, from which we recover the input fiducial cosmology. We also perform a preliminary analysis of potential systematic errors and provide an estimate of the impact of baryonic effects on sparsity measurements. We evaluate the sparsity for a sample of 104 clusters with hydrostatic masses from X-ray observations and derive constraints on the cosmic matter density $Omega_m$ and the normalisation amplitude of density fluctuations at the $8$ Mpc h$^{-1}$ scale, $sigma_8$. Assuming no systematics, we find $Omega_m=0.42pm 0.17$ and $sigma_8=0.80pm 0.31$ at $1sigma$, corresponding to $S_8equiv sigma_8sqrt{Omega_m}=0.48pm 0.11$. Future cluster surveys may provide opportunities for precise measurements of the sparsity. A sample of a few hundreds clusters with mass estimate errors at a few percent level can provide competitive cosmological parameter constraints complementary to those inferred from other cosmic probes.