Year: 2017
Type: article
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 ∼0.125(h^{-1} Gpc)^{3} and galaxy number density ∼1/(h^{-1} Mpc)^{3}, the two normal-branch Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati models and the F5 f(R) 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.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Authors: Wenjuan Fang, Baojiu Li, Gong-Bo Zhao
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: Visiting Fellowships at Durham, Durham DiRAC-2 petascale facility, G2038892709, G2309500096, G2918681272, G3050355085, G4329979236, G449834265, Durham Astronomy Consolidated Grant 2014-2017, G764792286, Durham Astronomy Consolidated Grant 2017-2020, G8244532188, The Virgo consortium for cosmological supercomputer simulations, Durham DiRAC-2 petascale facility support, G8466375024, G8546738121, G8986044568, G988696487
OpenAlex ID: W2611924239