No Arabic abstract
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.
Spectroscopic methods allow to measure energy differences with unrivaled precision. In the case of gravity resonance spectroscopy, energy differences of different gravitational states are measured without recourse to the electromagnetic interaction. This provides a very pure and background free look at gravitation and topics related to the central problem of dark energy and dark matter at short distances. In this article we analyse the effect of additional dark energy scalar symmetron fields, a leading candidate for a screened dark energy field, and place limits in a large volume of parameter space.
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.
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.
We study the interaction of an electrically charged component of the dark matter with a magnetized galactic interstellar medium (ISM) of (rotating) spiral galaxies. For the observed ordered component of the field, $Bsim mu$G, we find that the accumulated Lorentz interactions between the charged particles and the ISM will extract an order unity fraction of the disk angular momentum over the few Gyr Galactic lifetime unless $q/e lesssim 10^{-13pm 1},m,c^2/$ GeV if all the dark matter is charged. The bound is weakened by factor $f_{rm qdm}^{-1/2}$ if only a mass fraction $f_{rm qdm}gtrsim0.13$ of the dark matter is charged. Here $q$ and $m$ are the dark matter particle mass and charge. If $f_{rm qdm}approx1$ this bound excludes charged dark matter produced via the freeze-in mechanism for $m lesssim$ TeV/$c^2$. This bound on $q/m$, obtained from Milky Way parameters, is rough and not based on any precise empirical test. However this bound is extremely strong and should motivate further work to better model the interaction of charged dark matter with ordered and disordered magnetic fields in galaxies and clusters of galaxies; to develop precise tests for the presence of charged dark matter based on better estimates of angular momentum exchange; and also to better understand how charged dark matter might modify the growth of magnetic fields, and the formation and interaction histories of galaxies, galaxy groups, and clusters.