K-mouflage gravity models that pass Solar System and cosmological constraints

We show that Solar System tests can place very strong constraints on K-mouflage models of gravity, which are coupled scalar field models with nontrivial kinetic terms that screen the fifth force in regions of large gravitational acceleration. In particular, the bounds on the anomalous perihelion of the Moon imposes stringent restrictions on the K-mouflage Lagrangian density, which can be met when the contributions of higher-order operators in the static regime are sufficiently small. The bound on the rate of change of the gravitational strength in the Solar System constrains the coupling strength $beta$ to be smaller than $0.1$. These two bounds impose tighter constraints than the results from the Cassini satellite and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. Despite the Solar System restrictions, we show that it is possible to construct viable models with interesting cosmological predictions. In particular, relative to $Lambda$-CDM, such models predict percent-level deviations for the clustering of matter and the number density of dark matter haloes. This makes these models predictive and testable by forthcoming observational missions.

Linear perturbations in K-mouflage cosmologies with massive neutrinos

We present a comprehensive derivation of linear perturbation equations for different matter species, including photons, baryons, cold dark matter, scalar fields, massless and massive neutrinos, in the presence of a generic conformal coupling. Starting from the Lagrangians, we show how the conformal transformation affects the dynamics. In particular, we discuss how to incorporate consistently the scalar coupling in the equations of the Boltzmann hierarchy for massive neutrinos and the subsequent fluid approximations. We use the recently proposed K-mouflage model as an example to demonstrate the numerical implementation of our linear perturbation equations. K-mouflage is a new mechanism to suppress the fifth force between matter particles induced by the scalar coupling, but in the linear regime the fifth force is unsuppressed and can change the clustering of different matter species in different ways. We show how the CMB, lensing potential and matter power spectra are affected by the fifth force, and find ranges of K-mouflage parameters whose effects could be seen observationally. We also find that the scalar coupling can have the nontrivial effect of shifting the amplitude of the power spectra of the lensing potential and density fluctuations in opposite directions, although both probe the overall clustering of matter. This paper can serve as a reference for those who work on generic coupled scalar field cosmology, or those who are interested in the cosmological behaviour of the K-mouflage model.

A clear and measurable signature of modified gravity in the galaxy velocity field

The velocity field of dark matter and galaxies reflects the continued action of gravity throughout cosmic history. We show that the low-order moments of the pairwise velocity distribution, $v_{12}$, are a powerful diagnostic of the laws of gravity on cosmological scales. In particular, the projected line-of-sight galaxy pairwise velocity dispersion, $sigma_{12}(r)$, is very sensitive to the presence of modified gravity. Using a set of high-resolution N-body simulations we compute the pairwise velocity distribution and its projected line-of-sight dispersion for a class of modified gravity theories: the chameleon fR gravity and Galileon gravity (cubic and quartic). The velocities of dark matter halos with a wide range of masses would exhibit deviations from General Relativity at the $(5-10)sigma$ level. We examine strategies for detecting these deviations in galaxy redshift and peculiar velocity surveys. If detected, this signature would be a smoking gun for modified gravity.