New Probe of Departures from General Relativity Using Minkowski Functionals

Fang, Wenjuan; Li, Baojiu; Zhao, Gong-Bo

Abstract

The morphological properties of the large scale structure of the Universe can be fully described by four Minkowski functionals (MFs), which provide important complementary information to other statistical observables such as the widely used 2-point statistics in configuration and Fourier spaces. In this work, for the first time, we present the differences in the morphology of the large scale structure caused by modifications to general relativity (to address the cosmic acceleration problem), by measuring the MFs from N-body simulations of modified gravity and general relativity. We find strong statistical power when using the MFs to constrain modified theories of gravity: with a galaxy survey that has survey volume ∼0.125ðh−1 GpcÞ3 and galaxy number density ∼1=ðh−1 MpcÞ3 , the two normal-branch Dvali-GabadadzePorrati models and the F5 fðRÞ model that we simulated can be discriminated from the ΛCDM model at a significance level ≳5σ with an individual MF measurement. Therefore, the MF of the large scale structure is potentially a powerful probe of gravity, and its application to real data deserves active exploration.

Citation

Fang, W., Li, B., & Zhao, G. (2017). New Probe of Departures from General Relativity Using Minkowski Functionals. Physical Review Letters, 118(18), Article 181301. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.181301

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 7, 2017
• Online Publication Date: May 2, 2017
• Publication Date: May 2, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 6, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 6, 2017
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 118
• Issue: 18
• Article Number: 181301
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.181301