Impact of theoretical priors in cosmological analyses: The case of single field quintessence
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Peirone, Simone↗
Engineering topics
Martinelli, Matteo
Publications and source records attributed to Martinelli, Matteo.
Model-independent constraints on modified gravity from current data and from the Euclid and SKA future surveys
The aim of this paper is to constrain modified gravity with redshift space distortion observations and supernovae measurements. Compared with a standard ΛCDM analysis, we include three additional free parameters, namely the initial conditions of the matter perturbations, the overall perturbation normalization, and a scale-dependent modified gravity parameter modifying the Poisson equation, in an attempt to perform a more model-independent analysis. First, we constrain the Poisson parameter Y (also called G {sub eff}) by using currently available f σ{sub 8} data and the recent SN catalog JLA. We find that the inclusion of the additional free parameters makes the constraints significantly weaker than when fixing them to the standard cosmological value. Second, we forecast future constraints on Y by using the predicted growth-rate data for Euclid and SKA missions. Here again we point out the weakening of the constraints when the additional parameters are included. Finally, we adopt as modified gravity Poisson parameter the specific Horndeski form, and use scale-dependent forecasts to build an exclusion plot for the Yukawa potential akin to the ones realized in laboratory experiments, both for the Euclid and the SKA surveys.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
Surfing gravitational waves: can bigravity survive growing tensor modes?
The theory of bigravity offers one of the simplest possibilities to describe a massive graviton while having self-accelerating cosmological solutions without a cosmological constant. However, it has been shown recently that bigravity is affected by early-time fast growing modes on the tensor sector. Here we argue that we can only trust the linear analysis up to when perturbations are in the linear regime and use a cut-off to stop the growing of the metric perturbations. This analysis, although more consistent, still leads to growing tensor modes that are unacceptably large for the theory to be compatible with measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), both in temperature and polarization spectra. In order to suppress the growing modes and make the model compatible with CMB spectra, we find it necessary to either fine-tune the initial conditions, modify the theory or set the cut-off for the tensor perturbations of the second metric much lower than unity. Initial conditions such that the growing mode is sufficiently suppresed can be achieved in scenarios in which inflation ends at the GeV scale.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
N-body lensed CMB maps: lensing extraction and characterization
We reconstruct shear maps and angular power spectra from simulated weakly lensed total intensity (TT) and polarised (EB) maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies, obtained using Born approximated ray-tracing through the N-body simulated Cold Dark Matter (CDM) structures in the Millennium Simulations (MS). We compare the recovered signal with the ΛCDM prediction, on the whole interval of angular scales which is allowed by the finite box size, extending from the degree scale to the arcminute, by applying a quadratic estimator in the flat sky limit; we consider PRISM-like instrumental specification for future generation CMB satellites, corresponding to arcminute angular resolution of 3.2' and sensitivity of 2.43 μK-arcmin. The noise contribution in the simulations closely follows the estimator prediction, becoming dominated by limits in the angular resolution for the EB signal, at ℓ ≅ 1500. The recovered signal shows no visible departure from predictions of the weak lensing power within uncertainties, when considering TT and EB data singularly. In particular, the reconstruction precision reaches the level of a few percent in bins with Δℓ ≅ 100 in the angular multiple interval 1000∼<ℓ∼<2000 for T, and about 10% for EB. Within the adopted specifications, polarisation data do represent a significant contribution to the lensing shear, which appear to faithfully trace the underlying N-body structure down to the smallest angular scales achievable with the present setup, validating at the same time the latter with respect to semi-analytical predictions from ΛCDM cosmology at the level of CMB lensing statistics. This work demonstrates the feasibility of CMB lensing studies based on large scale simulations of cosmological structure formation in the context of the current and future high resolution and sensitivity CMB experiment.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
Measuring primordial gravitational waves from CMB B−modes in cosmologies with generalized expansion histories
We evaluate our capability to constrain the abundance of primordial tensor perturbations (primordial gravitational waves, PGWs) in cosmologies with generalized expansion histories in the epoch of cosmic acceleration. Forthcoming satellite and sub-orbital experiments probing polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) are expected to measure the B−mode power in CMB polarization, coming from PGWs on the degree scale, as well as gravitational lensing on arcminute scales; the latter is the main competitor for the measurement of PGWs, and is directly affected by the underlying expansion history, determined by the presence of a Dark Energy (DE) component. In particular, we consider early DE possible scenarios, in which the expansion history is substantially modified at the epoch in which the CMB lensing is most relevant. We show that the introduction of a parametrized DE may induce a variation as large as 30% in the ratio of the power of lensing and PGWs on the degree scale. We find that adopting the nominal specifications of upcoming satellite measurements, the constraining power on PGWs is weakened by the inclusion of the extra degrees of freedom, resulting in a reduction of about 10% of the upper limits on r in fiducial models with no GWs, as well as a comparable increase in the error bars in models with non-zero tensor power. Moreover, we find that the inclusion of sub-orbital CMB experiments, capable of mapping the B−mode power up to the angular scales which are affected by lensing, has the effect of restoring the forecasted performances with a fixed cosmological expansion history corresponding to a cosmological constant. Finally, we show how the combination of CMB data with Type Ia SuperNovae (SNe), Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Hubble constant allows to constrain simultaneously the primordial tensor power and the DE quantities in the parametrization we consider, consisting of present abundance and first redshift derivative of the energy density. We compare this study with results obtained using the forecasted lensing potential measurement precision from CMB satellite observations, finding consistent results.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
Constraining modified gravitational theories by weak lensing with Euclid
Future proposed satellite missions such as Euclid can offer the opportunity to test general relativity on cosmic scales through mapping of the galaxy weak-lensing signal. In this paper we forecast the ability of these experiments to constrain modified gravity scenarios such as those predicted by scalar-tensor and f(R) theories. We find that Euclid will improve constraints expected from the Planck satellite on these modified theories of gravity by 2 orders of magnitude. We discuss parameter degeneracies and the possible biases introduced by modifications to gravity.
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
Constraining fundamental physics with future CMB experiments
The Planck experiment will soon provide a very accurate measurement of cosmic microwave background anisotropies. This will let cosmologists determine most of the cosmological parameters with unprecedented accuracy. Future experiments will improve and complement the Planck data with better angular resolution and better polarization sensitivity. This unexplored region of the CMB power spectrum contains information on many parameters of interest, including neutrino mass, the number of relativistic particles at recombination, the primordial helium abundance, and the injection of additional ionizing photons by dark matter self-annihilation. We review the imprint of each parameter on the CMB and forecast the constraints achievable by future experiments by performing a Monte Carlo analysis on synthetic realizations of simulated data. We find that next generation satellite missions such as CMBPol could provide valuable constraints with a precision close to that expected in current and near future laboratory experiments. Finally, we discuss the implications of this intersection between cosmology and fundamental physics.
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗