arXiv subjects

Anne-Christine Davis

Publications and source records attributed to Anne-Christine Davis.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

Pulsar Constraints on Screened Modified Gravity

We calculate the rate of energy loss from compact astrophysical objects due to a scalar field in screened modified gravity models of the chameleon, dilaton and symmetron types. The cosmological evolution of the field results in a time-variation of the scalar charge of screened objects implying the emission of scalar radiation. Focusing on binary objects, this leads to an additional decay in the orbital period complementing that due to the emission of gravitational waves. Using the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, the double pulsar PSR J0737-3039 and the pulsar-white dwarf system PSR J1738+033, we find a new observational bound on the time variation of the scalar charge of the earth in the Milky Way. We then translate this into a new bound on the range of the scalar interaction in the Milky Way. Ultimately, we find that pulsar tests are not competitive with current observational constraints.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2014

Early Modified Gravity: Implications for Cosmology

We study the effects of modifications of gravity after Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) which would manifest themselves mainly before recombination. We consider their effects on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation and on the formation of large scale structure. The models that we introduce here represent all screened modifications of General Relativity (GR) which evade the local tests of gravity such as the violation of the strong equivalence principle as constrained by the Lunar Ranging experiment. We use the tomographic description of modified gravity which defines models with screening mechanisms of the chameleon or Damour-Polyakov types and allows one to relate the temporal evolution of the mass and the coupling to matter of a scalar field to its Lagrangian and also to cosmological perturbations. The models with early modifications of gravity all involve a coupling to matter which is stronger in the past leading to effects on perturbations before recombination while minimising deviations from Lambda-CDM structure formation at late times. We find that a new family of early transition models lead to discrepancies in the CMB spectrum which could reach a few percent and appear as both enhancements and reductions of power for different scales.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Dynamics of Supersymmetric Chameleons

We investigate the cosmological dynamics of a class of supersymmetric chameleon models coupled to cold dark matter fermions. Supergravity corrections ensure that these models are efficiently screened in all astrophysical objects of interest, however this does not preclude the enhancement of gravity on linear cosmological scales. We analyse the background cosmology and solve the modified equations for the growth of cold dark matter density perturbations in closed form. Using this, we go on to derive the modified linear power spectrum which is characterised by two scales, the horizon size at matter-radiation equality and at the redshift when the chameleon reaches the minimum of its effective potential. The model includes a cosmological constant in the form of a Fayet-Illiopolous term, which emerges at late times due to the coupling of the chameleon to two charged scalars. We examine the conditions under which this leads to viable background cosmology and go on to analyse the deviations from the LCDM predictions in the linear regime. We find that for reasonable values in the model's parameter space there is generically a region where the model's cosmology is viable and current measurements can be reproduced. A small discrepancy of the matter power spectrum from its LCDM counterpart can be obtained in a smaller subset of the parameter space.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Novel Probes of Gravity and Dark Energy

The discovery of cosmic acceleration has stimulated theorists to consider dark energy or modifications to Einstein's General Relativity as possible explanations. The last decade has seen advances in theories that go beyond smooth dark energy -- modified gravity and interactions of dark energy. While the theoretical terrain is being actively explored, the generic presence of fifth forces and dark sector couplings suggests a set of distinct observational signatures. This report focuses on observations that differ from the conventional probes that map the expansion history or large-scale structure. Examples of such novel probes are: detection of scalar fields via lab experiments, tests of modified gravity using stars and galaxies in the nearby universe, comparison of lensing and dynamical masses of galaxies and clusters, and the measurements of fundamental constants at high redshift. The observational expertise involved is very broad as it spans laboratory experiments, high resolution astronomical imaging and spectroscopy and radio observations. In the coming decade, searches for these effects have the potential for discovering fundamental new physics. We discuss how the searches can be carried out using experiments that are already under way or with modest adaptations of existing telescopes or planned experiments. The accompanying paper on the Growth of Cosmic Structure describes complementary tests of gravity with observations of large-scale structure.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Cosmological Tests of the Disformal Coupling to Radiation

Light scalar fields can naturally couple disformally to Standard Model fields without giving rise to the unacceptably large fifth forces usually associated with light scalars. We show that these scalar fields can still be studied and constrained through their interaction with photons, and focus particularly on changes to the Cosmic Microwave Background spectral distortions and violations of the distance duality relation. We then specialise our constraints to scalars which could play the role of axionic quintessence.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

SUPER-Screening

We present a framework for embedding scalar-tensor models of screened modifed gravity such as chameleons, symmetrons and environmental dilatons into global supersymmetry. This achieved by secluding the dark sector from both the observable and supersymmetry breaking sectors. We examine the resulting supersymmetric features in a model-independent manner and find that, when the theory follows from an underlying supergravity, the mediation of supersymmetry breaking to the dark sector induces a soft mass for the scalar of order the gravitino mass. This is enough to forbid the construction of supersymmetric symmetrons and ensures that when other screening mechanisms operate, no object in the universe is unscreened thereby precluding any observable signatures. In view of a possible origin of modifed gravity within fundamental physics, we find that no-scale models are the only ones that can circumvent these features. We also present a novel mechanism where the coupling of the scalar to two other scalars charged under U(1) can dynamically generate a small cosmological constant at late times in the form of a Fayet-Iliopoulos term.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Shining Light on Modifications of Gravity

Many modifications of gravity introduce new scalar degrees of freedom, and in such theories matter fields typically couple to an effective metric that depends on both the true metric of spacetime and on the scalar field and its derivatives. Scalar field contributions to the effective metric can be classified as conformal and disformal. Disformal terms introduce gradient couplings between scalar fields and the energy momentum tensor of other matter fields, and cannot be constrained by fifth force experiments because the effects of these terms are trivial around static non-relativistic sources. The use of high-precision, low-energy photon experiments to search for conformally coupled scalar fields, called axion-like particles, is well known. In this article we show that these experiments are also constraining for disformal scalar field theories, and are particularly important because of the difficulty of constraining these couplings with other laboratory experiments.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Systematic simulations of modified gravity: symmetron and dilaton models

We study the linear and nonlinear structure formation in the dilaton and symmetron models of modified gravity using a generic parameterisation which describes a large class of scenarios using only a few parameters, such as the coupling between the scalar field and the matter, and the range of the scalar force on very large scales. For this we have modified the N-body simulation code ECOSMOG, which is a variant of RAMSES working in modified gravity scenarios, to perform a set of 110 simulations for different models and parameter values, including the default LCDM. These simulations enable us to explore a large portion of the parameter space. We have studied the effects of modified gravity on the matter power spectrum and mass function, and found a rich and interesting phenomenology where the difference with the LCDM template cannot be reproduced by a linear analysis even on scales as large as k~0.05 h/Mpc. Our results show the full effect of screening on nonlinear structure formation and the associated deviation from LCDM. We also investigate how differences in the force mediated by the scalar field in modified gravity models lead to qualitatively different features for the nonlinear power spectrum and the halo mass function, and how varying the individual model parameters changes these observables. The differences are particularly large in the nonlinear power spectra whose shapes for f(R), dilaton and symmetron models vary greatly, and where the characteristic bump around 1 h/Mpc of f(R) models is preserved for symmetrons, whereas an increase on much smaller scales is particular to symmetrons. No bump is present for dilatons where a flattening of the power spectrum takes place on small scales. These deviations from LCDM and the differences between modified gravity models, such as dilatons and symmetrons, could be tested with future surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Screening fifth forces in k-essence and DBI models

New fifth forces have not yet been detected in the laboratory or in the solar system, hence it is typically difficult to introduce new light scalar fields that would mediate such forces. In recent years it has been shown that a number of non-linear scalar field theories allow for a dynamical mechanism, such as the Vainshtein and chameleon ones, that suppresses the strength of the scalar fifth force in experimental environments. This is known as screening, however it is unclear how common screening is within non-linear scalar field theories. k-essence models are commonly studied examples of non-linear models, with DBI as the best motivated example, and so we ask whether these non-linearities are able to screen a scalar fifth force. We find that a Vainshtein-like screening mechanism exists for such models although with limited applicability. For instance, we cannot find a screening mechanism for DBI models. On the other hand, we construct a large class of k-essence models which lead to the acceleration of the Universe in the recent past for which the fifth force mediated by the scalar can be screened.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

Modified Gravity Tomography

We consider the effect of a scalar field degree of freedom on the dynamics of gravity from small to large scales. We show that the effects of modified gravity can be completely captured by the time variations of the scalar field mass and its coupling to matter. This leads to a parameterisation of modified gravity where local constraints are easy to analyse and large scale scale structure effects apparent.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Signatures of Modified Gravity on the 21-cm Power Spectrum at Reionisation

Scalar modifications of gravity have an impact on the growth of structure. Baryon and Cold Dark Matter (CDM) perturbations grow anomalously for scales within the Compton wavelength of the scalar field. In the late time Universe when reionisation occurs, the spectrum of the 21cm brightness temperature is thus affected. We study this effect for chameleon-f(R) models, dilatons and symmetrons. Although the f(R) models are more tightly constrained by solar system bounds, and effects on dilaton models are negligible, we find that symmetrons where the phase transition occurs before z_* ~ 12 will be detectable for a scalar field range as low as 5 kpc. For all these models, the detection prospects of modified gravity effects are higher when considering modes parallel to the line of sight where very small scales can be probed. The study of the 21 cm spectrum thus offers a complementary approach to testing modified gravity with large scale structure surveys. Short scales, which would be highly non-linear in the very late time Universe when structure forms and where modified gravity effects are screened, appear in the linear spectrum of 21 cm physics, hence deviating from General Relativity in a maximal way.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

A Unified Description of Screened Modified Gravity

We consider modified gravity models driven by a scalar field whose effects are screened in high density regions due to the presence of non-linearities in its interaction potential and/or its coupling to matter. Our approach covers chameleon, f(R) gravity, dilaton and symmetron models and allows a unified description of all these theories. We find that the dynamics of modified gravity are entirely captured by the time variation of the scalar field mass and its coupling to matter evaluated at the cosmological minimum of its effective potential, where the scalar field sits since an epoch prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. This new parameterisation of modified gravity allows one to reconstruct the potential and coupling to matter and therefore to analyse the full dynamics of the models, from the scale dependent growth of structures at the linear level to non-linear effects requiring N-body simulations. This procedure is illustrated with explicit examples of reconstruction for chameleon, dilaton, f(R) and symmetron models.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Modified Gravity Makes Galaxies Brighter

We investigate the effect of modifed gravity with screening mechanisms, such as the chameleon or symmetron models, upon the structure of main sequence stars. We find that unscreened stars can be significantly more luminous and ephemeral than their screened doppelgangers. By embedding these stars into dwarf galaxies, which can be unscreened for values of the parameters not yet ruled out observationally, we show that the cumulative effect of their increased luminosity can enhance the total galactic luminosity. We estimate this enhancement and find that it can be considerable given model parameters that are still under experimental scrutiny. By looking for systematic offsets between screened dwarf galaxies in clusters and unscreened galaxies in voids, these effects could form the basis of an independent observational test that can potentially lower the current experimental bounds on the model independent parameters of these theories by and order of magnitude or more.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at Effective Field Theory Violations During Inflation

We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its vacuum state, we find that violations of decoupling are absent unless there is a breakdown of the slow-roll conditions. Next we allow for a temporary departure from inflation resulting in a period of non-adiabaticity during which effective field theory methods are known to fail. We find that the locality of the event and energy conservation lead to a tight bound on the size of the effects of the heavy field. We discuss the implications for the power spectrum and non-gaussianity, and comment on the connection with recent studies of the dynamics of multi-field inflation models. Our results further motivate the use of effective field theory methods to characterize cosmic inflation, and focus the question of observability of additional degrees of freedom during inflation to near the Hubble scale or below - as anticipated from the Wilsonian notions of decoupling and naturalness.

hep-th↗

arXiv2012

The Importance of Slow-roll Corrections During Multi-field Inflation

We re-examine the importance of slow-roll corrections during the evolution of cosmological perturbations in models of multi-field inflation. We find that in many instances the presence of light degrees of freedom leads to situations in which next to leading order slow-roll corrections become significant. Examples where we expect such corrections to be crucial include models in which modes exit the Hubble radius while the inflationary trajectory undergoes an abrupt turn in field space, or during a phase transition. We illustrate this with two examples -- hybrid inflation and double quadratic inflation. Utilizing both analytic estimates and full numerical results, we find that corrections can be as large as 20%. Our results have implications for many existing models in the literature, as these corrections must be included to obtain accurate observational predictions -- particularly given the level of accuracy expected from CMB experiments such as Planck

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

The Cosmological Supersymmetron

Recently, a supersymmetric model of dark energy coupled to cold dark matter, the supersymmetron, has been proposed. In the absence of cold dark matter, the supersymmetron field converges to a supersymmetric minimum with a vanishing cosmological constant. When cold dark matter is present, the supersymmetron evolves to a matter dependent minimum where its energy density does not vanish and could lead to the present acceleration of the Universe. The supersymmetron generates a short ranged fifth force which evades gravitational tests. It could lead to observable signatures on structure formation due to a very strong coupling to dark matter. We investigate the cosmological evolution of the field, focusing on the linear perturbations and the spherical collapse and find that observable modifications in structure formation can indeed exist. Unfortunately, we find that when the growth-rate of perturbations is in agreement with observations, an additional cosmological constant is required to account for dark energy. In this case, effects on large scale structures are still present at the non-linear level which are investigated using the spherical collapse approach.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Supersymmetron

We consider a supersymmetric model of dark energy coupled to cold dark matter: the supersymmetron. In the absence of cold dark matter, the supersymmetron converges to a supersymmetric minimum with a vanishing cosmological constant. When cold dark matter is present, the supersymmetron evolves to a matter dependent minimum where its energy density does not vanish. In the early universe until the recent past of the Universe, the energy density of the supersymmetron is negligible compared to the cold dark matter energy density. Away from the supersymmetric minimum, the equation of state of the supersymmetron is constant and negative. When the supersymmetron reaches the neighbourhood of the supersymmetric minimum, its equation of state vanishes rapidly. This leads to an acceleration of the universe which is transient unless supersymmetry breaking induces a pure cosmological constant and acceleration of the Universe does not end. Moreover, we find that the mass of supersymmetron is always greater than the gravitino mass. As a result, the supersymmetron generates a short ranged fifth force which evades gravitational tests. On the other hand, we find that the supersymmetron may lead to relevant effects on large scale structures.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Modified Gravity and the CMB

We consider the effect of modified gravity on the peak structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectrum. We focus on simple models of modified gravity mediated by a massive scalar field coupled to both baryons and cold dark matter. This captures the features of chameleon, symmetron, dilaton and $f(R)$ models. We find that the CMB peaks can be affected in three independent ways provided the Compton radius of the massive scalar is not far-off the sound horizon at last scattering. When the coupling of the massive scalar to Cold Dark Matter (CDM) is large, the anomalous growth of the CDM perturbation inside the Compton radius induces a change in the peak amplitudes. When the coupling to baryons is moderately large, the speed of sound is modified and the peaks shifted to higher momenta. Finally when both couplings are non-vanishing, a new contribution proportional to the Newton potential appears in the Sachs-Wolfe temperature and increases the peak amplitudes. We also show how, given any temporal evolution of the scalar field mass, one can engineer a corresponding modified gravity model of the chameleon type. This opens up the possibility of having independent constraints on modified gravity from the CMB peaks and large scale structures at low redshifts.

astro-ph.CO↗