Cosmic Tsunamis in Modified Gravity: Disruption of Screening Mechanisms from Scalar Waves

Hagala, R.; Llinares, C.; Mota, D. F.

Abstract

Extending general relativity by adding extra degrees of freedom is a popular approach for explaining the accelerated expansion of the Universe and to build high energy completions of the theory of gravity. The presence of such new degrees of freedom is, however, tightly constrained from several observations and experiments that aim to test general relativity in a wide range of scales. The viability of a given modified theory of gravity, therefore, strongly depends on the existence of a screening mechanism that suppresses the extra degrees of freedom. We perform simulations, and find that waves propagating in the new degrees of freedom can significantly impact the efficiency of some screening mechanisms, thereby threatening the viability of these modified gravity theories. Specifically, we show that the waves produced in the symmetron model can increase the amplitude of the fifth force and the parametrized post Newtonian parameters by several orders of magnitude.

Citation

Hagala, R., Llinares, C., & Mota, D. (2017). Cosmic Tsunamis in Modified Gravity: Disruption of Screening Mechanisms from Scalar Waves. Physical Review Letters, 118(10), Article 101301. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.101301

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 18, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Mar 10, 2017
• Publication Date: Mar 10, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 26, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 26, 2017
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 118
• Issue: 10
• Article Number: 101301
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.101301
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1380709