arXiv subjects

Eric V. Linder

Publications and source records attributed to Eric V. Linder.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

The End of Cosmic Growth

The growth of large scale structure is a battle between gravitational attraction and cosmic acceleration. We investigate the future behavior of cosmic growth under both general relativity (GR) and modified gravity during prolonged acceleration, deriving analytic asymptotic behaviors and showing that gravity generally loses and growth ends. We also note the `why now' problem is equally striking when viewed in terms of the shut down of growth. For many models inside GR the gravitational growth index $γ$ also shows today as a unique time between constant behavior in the past and a higher asymptotic value in the future. Interestingly, while $f(R)$ models depart in this respect dramatically from GR today and in the recent past, their growth indices are identical in the asymptotic future and past.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

Will Gravitational Wave Sirens Determine the Hubble Constant?

Lack of knowledge about the background expansion history of the Universe from independent observations makes it problematic to obtain a precise and accurate estimation of the Hubble constant $H_0$ from gravitational wave standard sirens, even with electromagnetic counterpart redshifts. Simply fitting simultaneously for the matter density in a flat \lcdm\ model can reduce the precision on $H_0$ from 1\% to 5\%, while not knowing the actual background expansion model of the universe (e.g.\ form of dark energy) can introduce substantial bias in estimation of the Hubble constant. When the statistical precision is at the level of 1\% uncertainty on $H_0$, biases in non-\lcdm\ cosmologies that are consistent with current data could reach the 3$σ$ level. To avoid model-dependent biases, statistical techniques that are appropriately agnostic about model assumptions need to be employed.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2018

No Slip CMB

No Slip Gravity is a simple modified gravity theory with only one free function and the interesting characteristic that -- unlike many modified gravity theories -- it suppresses growth. This allows it to fit current redshift space distortion and $σ_8$ mass fluctuation amplitude data better than $Λ$CDM in general relativity, while retaining a $Λ$CDM background expansion and hence distances. Since it has no gravitational slip it alters equally CMB lensing and matter density growth, and in addition affects the CMB gravitational wave B-mode polarization power spectrum. We investigate and compute the effects of No Slip Gravity for CMB lensing and B-modes, and present a simple analytic approximation. Using a Monte Carlo analysis, we place constraints on the theory from current CMB data.

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arXiv2018

Dark energy from $α$-attractors: phenomenology and observational constraints

The possibility of linking inflation and late cosmic accelerated expansion using the $α$-attractor models has received increasing attention due to their physical motivation. In the early universe, $α$-attractors provide an inflationary mechanism compatible with Planck satellite CMB observations and predictive for future gravitational wave CMB modes. Additionally $α$-attractors can be written as quintessence models with a potential that connects a power law regime with a plateau or uplifted exponential, allowing a late cosmic accelerated expansion that can mimic behavior near a cosmological constant. In this paper we study a generalized dark energy $α$-attractor model. We thoroughly investigate its phenomenology, including the role of all model parameters and the possibility of large-scale tachyonic instability clustering. We verify the relation that $1+w\sim 1/α$ (while the gravitational wave power $r\simα$) so these models predict that a signature should appear in either the primordial B-modes or in late time deviation from a cosmological constant. We constrain the model parameters with current datasets, including the cosmic microwave background (Planck 2015 angular power spectrum, polarization and lensing), baryon acoustic oscillations (BOSS DR12) and supernovae (Pantheon compressed). Our results show that expansion histories close to a cosmological constant exist in large regions of the parameter space, not requiring a fine-tuning of the parameters or initial conditions.

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arXiv2018

Gravity's Islands: Parametrizing Horndeski Stability

Cosmic acceleration may be due to modified gravity, with effective field theory or property functions describing the theory. Connection to cosmological observations through practical parametrization of these functions is difficult and also faces the issue that not all assumed time dependence or parts of parameter space give a stable theory. We investigate the relation between parametrization and stability in Horndeski gravity, showing that the results are highly dependent on the function parametrization. This can cause misinterpretations of cosmological observations, hiding and even ruling out key theoretical signatures. We discuss approaches and constraints that can be placed on the property functions and scalar sound speed to preserve some observational properties, but find that parametrizations closest to the observations, e.g. in terms of the gravitational strengths, offer more robust physical interpretations. In addition we present an example of how future observations of the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background from primordial gravitational waves can probe different aspects of gravity.

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arXiv2018

Finite Energy but Infinite Entropy Production from Moving Mirrors

Accelerating mirrors provide a simple conceptual laboratory for studying particle production and the relation between trajectory and particle, energy, and entropy fluxes. We focus on the relation between energy and entropy, studying some special cases with finite total energy but infinite integrated entropy (though the entropy flux may be finite at any particular moment). We present a new asymptotically static moving mirror trajectory with solvable beta Bogolyubov coefficients, total energy and fully relativistic particle count. The integrated entropy diverges despite finite global radiative particle and energy emission. Another class of models includes exponentially accelerated mirrors in proper time; one of its unexpected behaviors is finite energy emission but divergent entropy. We compare mirrors exponentially accelerated in other coordinates as well, showing their close relation and an interesting duality property.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

No Slip Gravity

A subclass of the Horndeski modified gravity theory we call No Slip Gravity has particularly interesting properties: 1) a speed of gravitational wave propagation equal to the speed of light, 2) equality between the effective gravitational coupling strengths to matter and light, $G_{\rm matter}$ and $G_{\rm light}$, hence no slip between the metric potentials, yet difference from Newton's constant, and 3) suppressed growth to give better agreement with galaxy clustering observations. We explore the characteristics and implications of this theory, and project observational constraints. We also give a simple expression for the ratio of the gravitational wave standard siren distance to the photon standard candle distance, in this theory and others, and enable a direct comparison of modified gravity in structure growth and in gravitational waves, an important crosscheck.

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arXiv2018

The Well-Tempered Cosmological Constant

Self tuning is one of the few methods for dynamically cancelling a large cosmological constant and yet giving an accelerating universe. Its drawback is that it tends to screen all sources of energy density, including matter. We develop a model that tempers the self tuning so the dynamical scalar field still cancels an arbitrary cosmological constant, including the vacuum energy through any high energy phase transitions, without affecting the matter fields. The scalar-tensor gravitational action is simple, related to cubic Horndeski gravity, with a nonlinear derivative interaction plus a tadpole term. Applying shift symmetry and using the property of degeneracy of the field equations we find families of functions that admit de Sitter solutions with expansion rates that are independent of the magnitude of the cosmological constant and preserve radiation and matter dominated phases. That is, the method can deliver a standard cosmic history including current acceleration, despite the presence of a Planck scale cosmological constant.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

Cosmic Curvature Tested Directly from Observations

Cosmic spatial curvature is a fundamental geometric quantity of the Universe. We investigate a model independent, geometric approach to measure spatial curvature directly from observations, without any derivatives of data. This employs strong lensing time delays and supernova distance measurements to measure the curvature itself, rather than just testing consistency with flatness. We define two curvature estimators, with differing error propagation characteristics, that can crosscheck each other, and also show how they can be used to map the curvature in redshift slices, to test constancy of curvature as required by the Robertson-Walker metric. Simulating realizations of redshift distributions and distance measurements of lenses and sources, we estimate uncertainties on the curvature enabled by next generation measurements. The results indicate that the model independent methods, using only geometry without assuming forms for the energy density constituents, can determine the curvature at the $\sim6\times10^{-3}$ level.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Eternal and Evanescent Black Holes: It's All Done With Mirrors

The analogy between black hole radiation and accelerating mirror radiation (the dynamical Casimir effect) is particularly strong for mirror trajectories giving rise to a constant thermal flux of particles. We present new ways to achieve such thermal plateaus, and customize their finite, semi-infinite, and eternal presence, corresponding to forming/collapsing, complete-evaporation/remnants, and eternal black holes. We find simple expressions for the energy flux in terms of the mirror rapidity as a function of proper time and null time.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

Subpercent Accurate Fitting of Modified Gravity Growth

Adding to our previous method for dealing with gravitational modifications at redshift $z\gtrsim3$ through a single parameter, we investigate treatment of lower redshift modifications to linear growth observables. We establish subpercent accurate fits to the redshift space distortion observable $fσ_8(a)$ using two parameters binned in redshift, testing the results for modifications with time dependence that rises, falls, is nonmonotonic, is multipeaked, and corresponds to $f(R)$ and braneworld gravity. The residuals are then propagated to cosmological parameter biases for DESI observations, and found to cause a shift in the dark energy joint confidence contour by less than the equivalent of $\sim0.1σ$. The proposed 2--3 parameter modified gravity description also can reveal physical characteristics of the underlying theory.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Slicing the Vacuum: New Accelerating Mirror Solutions of the Dynamical Casimir Effect

Radiation from accelerating mirrors in a Minkowski spacetime provides insights into the nature of horizons, black holes, and entanglement entropy. We introduce new, simple, symmetric and analytic moving mirror solutions and study their particle, energy, and entropy production. This includes an asymptotically static case with finite emission that is the black hole analog of complete evaporation. The total energy, total entropy, total particles, and spectrum are the same on both sides of the mirror. We also study its asymptotically inertial, drifting analog (which gives a black hole remnant) to explore differences in finite and infinite production.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

Accelerated Parameter Estimation with DALE$χ$

We consider methods for improving the estimation of constraints on a high-dimensional parameter space with a computationally expensive likelihood function. In such cases Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) can take a long time to converge and concentrates on finding the maxima rather than the often-desired confidence contours for accurate error estimation. We employ DALE$χ$ (Direct Analysis of Limits via the Exterior of $χ^2$) for determining confidence contours by minimizing a cost function parametrized to incentivize points in parameter space which are both on the confidence limit and far from previously sampled points. We compare DALE$χ$ to the nested sampling algorithm implemented in MultiNest on a toy likelihood function that is highly non-Gaussian and non-linear in the mapping between parameter values and $χ^2$. We find that in high-dimensional cases DALE$χ$ finds the same confidence limit as MultiNest using roughly an order of magnitude fewer evaluations of the likelihood function. DALE$χ$ is open-source and available at https://github.com/danielsf/Dalex.git.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2017

Constraining Dark Energy Dynamics in Extended Parameter Space

Dynamical dark energy has been recently suggested as a promising and physical way to solve the 3.4 sigma tension on the value of the Hubble constant $H_0$ between the direct measurement of Riess et al. (2016) (R16, hereafter) and the indirect constraint from Cosmic Microwave Anisotropies obtained by the Planck satellite under the assumption of a $Λ$CDM model. In this paper, by parameterizing dark energy evolution using the $w_0$-$w_a$ approach, and considering a $12$ parameter extended scenario, we find that: a) the tension on the Hubble constant can indeed be solved with dynamical dark energy, b) a cosmological constant is ruled out at more than $95 \%$ c.l. by the Planck+R16 dataset, and c) all of the standard quintessence and half of the "downward going" dark energy model space (characterized by an equation of state that decreases with time) is also excluded at more than $95 \%$ c.l. These results are further confirmed when cosmic shear, CMB lensing, or SN~Ia luminosity distance data are also included. However, tension remains with the BAO dataset. A cosmological constant and small portion of the freezing quintessence models are still in agreement with the Planck+R16+BAO dataset at between 68\% and 95\% c.l. Conversely, for Planck plus a phenomenological $H_0$ prior, both thawing and freezing quintessence models prefer a Hubble constant of less than 70 km/s/Mpc. The general conclusions hold also when considering models with non-zero spatial curvature.

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arXiv2017

$Λ$ is Coming: Parametrizing Freezing Fields

We explore freezing dark energy, where the evolution of the field approaches that of a cosmological constant at late times. We propose two general, two parameter forms to describe the class of freezing field models, in analogy to ones for thawing fields, here based on the physics of the flow parameter or the calibrated $w$-$w'$ phase space. Observables such as distances and Hubble parameters are fit to within 0.1%, and the dark energy equation of state generally to within better than 1%, of the exact numerical solutions.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Cosmic Growth Signatures of Modified Gravitational Strength

Cosmic growth of large scale structure probes the entire history of cosmic expansion and gravitational coupling. To get a clear picture of the effects of modification of gravity we consider a deviation in the coupling strength (effective Newton's constant) at different redshifts, with different durations and amplitudes. We derive, analytically and numerically, the impact on the growth rate and growth amplitude. Galaxy redshift surveys can measure a product of these through redshift space distortions and we connect the modified gravity to the observable in a way that may provide a useful parametrization of the ability of future surveys to test gravity. In particular, modifications during the matter dominated era can be treated by a single parameter, the "area" of the modification, to an accuracy of $\sim0.3\%$ in the observables. We project constraints on both early and late time gravity for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and discuss what is needed for tightening tests of gravity to better than 5% uncertainty.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Challenges in Connecting Modified Gravity Theory and Observations

Cosmic acceleration may be due to modifications of cosmic gravity and to test this we need robust connections between theory and observations. However, in a model independent approach like effective field theory or a broad class like Horndeski gravity, several free functions of time enter the theory. We show that simple parametrizations of these functions are unlikely to be successful; in particular the approximation $α_i(t)\proptoΩ_{\rm de}(t)$ drastically misestimates the observables. This holds even in simple modified gravity theories like $f(R)$. Indeed, oversimplified approximations to the property functions $α_i(t)$ can even miss the signature of modified gravity. We also consider the question of consistency relations and the role of tensor (gravitational wave) perturbations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Cosmic Growth and Expansion Conjoined

Cosmological measurements of both the expansion history and growth history have matured, and the two together provide an important test of general relativity. We consider their joint evolutionary track, showing that this has advantages in distinguishing cosmologies relative to considering them individually or at isolated redshifts. In particular, the joint comparison relaxes the shape degeneracy that makes $fσ_8(z)$ curves difficult to separate from the overall growth amplitude. The conjoined method further helps visualization of which combinations of redshift ranges provide the clearest discrimination. We examine standard dark energy cosmologies, modified gravity, and "stuttering" growth, each showing distinct signatures.

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