arXiv subjects

Luca Amendola

Publications and source records attributed to Luca Amendola.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

A spectre is haunting the cosmos: Quantum stability of massive gravity with ghosts

Many theories of modified gravity with higher order derivatives are usually ignored because of serious problems that appear due to an additional ghost degree of freedom. Most dangerously, it causes an immediate decay of the vacuum. However, breaking Lorentz invariance can cure such abominable behavior. By analyzing a model that describes a massive graviton together with a remaining Boulware-Deser ghost mode we show that even ghostly theories of modified gravity can yield models that are viable at both classical and quantum levels and, therefore, they should not generally be ruled out. Furthermore, we identify the most dangerous quantum scattering process that has the main impact on the decay time and find differences to simple theories that only describe an ordinary scalar field and a ghost. Additionally, constraints on the parameters of the theory including some upper bounds on the Lorentz-breaking cutoff scale are presented. In particular, for a simple theory of massive gravity we find that a breaking of Lorentz invariance is allowed to happen even at scales above the Planck mass. Finally, we discuss the relevance to other theories of modified gravity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Fitting and forecasting non-linear coupled dark energy

We consider cosmological models in which dark matter feels a fifth force mediated by the dark energy scalar field, also known as coupled dark energy. Our interest resides in estimating forecasts for future surveys like Euclid when we take into account non-linear effects, relying on new fitting functions that reproduce the non-linear matter power spectrum obtained from N-body simulations. We obtain fitting functions for models in which the dark matter-dark energy coupling is constant. Their validity is demonstrated for all available simulations in the redshift range $z=0-1.6$ and wave modes below $k=10 \text{h/Mpc}$. These fitting formulas can be used to test the predictions of the model in the non-linear regime without the need for additional computing-intensive N-body simulations. We then use these fitting functions to perform forecasts on the constraining power that future galaxy-redshift surveys like Euclid will have on the coupling parameter, using the Fisher matrix method for galaxy clustering (GC) and weak lensing (WL). We find that by using information in the non-linear power spectrum, and combining the GC and WL probes, we can constrain the dark matter-dark energy coupling constant squared, $β^{2}$, with precision smaller than 4\% and all other cosmological parameters better than 1\%, which is a considerable improvement of more than an order of magnitude compared to corresponding linear power spectrum forecasts with the same survey specifications.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Aller guten Dinge sind drei: Cosmology with three interacting spin-2 fields

Theories of massive gravity with one or two dynamical metrics generically lack stable and observationally-viable cosmological solutions that are distinguishable from $Λ$CDM. We consider an extension to trimetric gravity, with three interacting spin-2 fields which are not plagued by the Boulware-Deser ghost. We systematically explore every combination with two free parameters in search of background cosmologies that are competitive with $Λ$CDM. For each case we determine whether the expansion history satisfies viability criteria, and whether or not it contains beyond-$Λ$CDM phenomenology. Among the many models we consider, there are only three cases that seem to be both viable and distinguishable from standard cosmology. One of the models has only one free parameter and displays a crossing from above to below the phantom divide. The other two provide scaling behavior, although they contain future singularities that need to be studied in more detail. These models possess interesting features that make them compelling targets for a full comparison to observations of both cosmological expansion history and structure formation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Dynamical analysis of $R\dfrac{1}{\Box^{2}}R$ cosmology: Impact of initial conditions and constraints from supernovae

We discuss the cosmological implications of the $R~\Box^{-2}R$ nonlocal modification to standard gravity. We relax the assumption of special initial conditions in the local formulation of the theory, perform a full phase-space analysis of the system, and show that the late-time cosmology of the model exhibits two distinct evolution paths, on which a large range of values for the present equation of state can be reached. We then compare the general solutions to supernovae data and place constraints on the parameters of the model. In particular, we find that the mass parameter of the theory should be smaller than 1.2 in Hubble units.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Cosmology and Fundamental Physics with the Euclid Satellite

Euclid is a European Space Agency medium class mission selected for launch in 2020 within the Cosmic Vision 2015 2025 program. The main goal of Euclid is to understand the origin of the accelerated expansion of the universe. Euclid will explore the expansion history of the universe and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and redshifts of galaxies as well as the distribution of clusters of galaxies over a large fraction of the sky. Although the main driver for Euclid is the nature of dark energy, Euclid science covers a vast range of topics, from cosmology to galaxy evolution to planetary research. In this review we focus on cosmology and fundamental physics, with a strong emphasis on science beyond the current standard models. We discuss five broad topics: dark energy and modified gravity, dark matter, initial conditions, basic assumptions and questions of methodology in the data analysis. This review has been planned and carried out within Euclid's Theory Working Group and is meant to provide a guide to the scientific themes that will underlie the activity of the group during the preparation of the Euclid mission.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

The effect of interacting dark energy on local measurements of the Hubble constant

In the current state of cosmology, where cosmological parameters are being measured to percent accuracy, it is essential to understand all sources of error to high precision. In this paper we present the results of a study of the local variations in the Hubble constant measured at the distance scale of the Coma Cluster, and test the validity of correcting for the peculiar velocities predicted by gravitational instability theory. The study is based on N-body simulations, and includes models featuring a coupling between dark energy and dark matter, as well as two $Λ$CDM simulations with different values of $σ_8$. It is found that the variance in the local flows is significantly larger in the coupled models, which increases the uncertainty in the local measurements of the Hubble constant in these scenarios. By comparing the results from the different simulations, it is found that most of the effect is caused by the higher value of $σ_8$ in the coupled cosmologies, though this cannot account for all of the additional variance. Given the discrepancy between different estimates of the Hubble constant in the universe today, cosmological models causing a greater cosmic variance is something that we should be aware of.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Non-Linear Matter Power Spectrum Covariance Matrix Errors and Cosmological Parameter Uncertainties

The covariance matrix of the matter power spectrum is a key element of the statistical analysis of galaxy clustering data. Independent realisations of observational measurements can be used to sample the covariance, nevertheless statistical sampling errors will propagate into the cosmological parameter inference potentially limiting the capabilities of the upcoming generation of galaxy surveys. The impact of these errors as function of the number of independent realisations has been previously evaluated for Gaussian distributed data. However, non-linearities in the late time clustering of matter cause departures from Gaussian statistics. Here, we address the impact of non-Gaussian errors on the sample covariance and precision matrix errors using a large ensemble of numerical N-body simulations. In the range of modes where finite volume effects are negligible ($0.1\lesssim k\,[h\,{\rm Mpc^{-1}}]\lesssim 1.2$) we find deviations of the estimated variance of the sample covariance with respect to Gaussian predictions above $\sim 10\%$ level. These reduce to about $\sim 5\%$ in the case of the precision matrix. Finally, we perform a Fisher analysis to estimate the effect of covariance errors on the cosmological parameter constraints. In particular, assuming Euclid-like survey characteristics we find that a number of independent realisation larger than $\gtrsim 5000$ is necessary to reduce the contribution of sample covariance errors to the cosmological parameter uncertainties at sub-percent level. We also show that restricting the analysis to large scales $k\lesssim0.2\,h\,{\rm Mpc^{-1}}$ results in a considerable loss in constraining power, while using the linear covariance to include smaller scales leads to an underestimation of the errors on the cosmological parameters.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

The evolving perception of controversial movies

Polarization of opinion is an important feature of public debate on political, social and cultural topics. The availability of large internet databases of users' ratings has permitted quantitative analysis of polarization trends-for instance, previous studies have included analyses of controversial topics on Wikipedia, as well as the relationship between online reviews and a product's perceived quality. Here, we study the dynamics of polarization in the movie ratings collected by the Internet Movie database (IMDb) website in relation to films produced over the period 1915-2015. We define two statistical indexes, dubbed hard and soft controversiality, which quantify polarized and uniform rating distributions, respectively. We find that controversy decreases with popularity and that hard controversy is relatively rare. Our findings also suggest that more recent movies are more controversial than older ones and we detect a trend of "convergence to the mainstream" with a time scale of roughly 40-50 years. This phenomenon appears qualitatively different from trends observed in both online reviews of commercial products and in political debate, and we speculate that it may be connected with the absence of long-lived "echo chambers" in the cultural domain. This hypothesis can and should be tested by extending our analysis to other forms of cultural expression and/or to databases with different demographic user bases.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2015

Consistent metric combinations in cosmology of massive bigravity

Massive bigravity models are interesting alternatives to standard cosmology. In most cases, however, these models have been studied for a simplified scenario in which both metrics take homogeneous and isotropic forms [Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW)] with the same spatial curvatures. The interest to consider more general geometries arises, in particular, in view of the difficulty so far encountered in building stable cosmological solutions with homogeneous and isotropic metrics. Here we consider a number of cases in which the two metrics take more general forms, namely FLRW with different spatial curvatures---Lemaître, Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi (LTB), and Bianchi I---as well as cases where only one metric is linearly perturbed. We discuss possible consistent combinations and find that only some special cases of FLRW--Lemaître, LTB--LTB, and FLRW--Bianchi I combinations give consistent, nontrivial solutions.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

The general form of the coupled Horndeski Lagrangian that allows cosmological scaling solutions

We consider the general scalar field Horndeski Lagrangian coupled to matter. Within this class of models, we present two results that are independent of the particular form of the model. First, we show that in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric the Horndeski Lagrangian coincides with the pressure of the scalar field. Second, we employ the previous result to identify the most general form of the Lagrangian that allows for cosmological scaling solutions, i.e. solutions where the ratio of matter to field density and the equation of state remain constant. Scaling solutions of this kind may help solving the coincidence problem since in this case the presently observed ratio of matter to dark energy does not depend on initial conditions, but rather on the theoretical parameters.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Cosmology and fundamental physics with the Euclid satellite

Euclid is a European Space Agency medium class mission selected for launch in 2019 within the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. The main goal of Euclid is to understand the origin of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Euclid will explore the expansion history of the Universe and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and redshifts of galaxies as well as the distribution of clusters of galaxies over a large fraction of the sky. Although the main driver for Euclid is the nature of dark energy, Euclid science covers a vast range of topics, from cosmology to galaxy evolution to planetary research. In this review we focus on cosmology and fundamental physics, with a strong emphasis on science beyond the current standard models. We discuss five broad topics: dark energy and modified gravity, dark matter, initial conditions, basic assumptions and questions of methodology in the data analysis. This review has been planned and carried out within Euclid's Theory Working Group and is meant to provide a guide to the scientific themes that will underlie the activity of the group during the preparation of the Euclid mission.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Semi-analytical Study on the Generic Degeneracy for Galaxy Clustering Measurements

From the galaxy power spectrum in redshift space, we derive semi-analytical results on the generic degeneracy of galaxy clustering measurements. Defining the observables $\bar{A}= Gbσ_8$ and $\bar{R} = Gfσ_8$, (being $G$ the growth function, $b$ the bias, $f$ the growth rate, and $σ_8$ the amplitude of the power spectrum), we perform a Fisher matrix formalism to forecast the expected precision of these quantities for a Euclid-like survey. Among the results we found that galaxy surveys have generically a slightly negative correlation between $\bar{A}$ and $\bar{R}$, and they can always measure $\bar{R}$ about 3.7 to 4.7 times better than $\bar{A}$.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

How can we tell whether dark energy is composed by multiple fields?

Dark energy is often assumed to be composed by a single scalar field. The background cosmic expansion is not sufficient to determine whether this is true or not. We study multi-field scalar-tensor models with a general dark matter source and write the observable modified gravity parameters (effective gravitational constant and anisotropic stress) in the form of a ratio of polynomials in the Fourier wavenumber k of order 2N, where N is the number of scalar fields. By comparing these observables to real data it is in principle possible to determine the number of dark energy scalar fields coupled to gravity. We also show that there are no realistic non-trivial cases in which the order of the polynomials is reduced.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Friction in Gravitational Waves: a test for early-time modified gravity

Modified gravity theories predict in general a non standard equation for the propagation of gravitational waves. Here we discuss the impact of modified friction and speed of tensor modes on cosmic microwave polarization B modes. We show that the non standard friction term, parametrized by $α_{M}$, is degenerate with the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$, so that small values of $r$ can be compensated by negative constant values of $α_M$. We quantify this degeneracy and its dependence on the epoch at which $α_{M}$ is different from the standard, zero, value and on the speed of gravitational waves $c_{T}$. In the particular case of scalar-tensor theories, $α_{M}$ is constant and strongly constrained by background and scalar perturbations, $0\le α_{M}< 0.01$ and the degeneracy with $r$ is removed. In more general cases however such tight bounds are weakened and the B modes can provide useful constraints on early-time modified gravity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

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.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Constraining the growth of perturbations with lensing of supernovae

A recently proposed technique allows one to constrain both the background and perturbation cosmological parameters through the distribution function of supernova Ia apparent magnitudes. Here we extend this technique to alternative cosmological scenarios, in which the growth of structure does not follow the $Λ$CDM prescription. We apply the method first to the supernova data provided by the JLA catalog combined with all the current independent redshift distortion data and with low-redshift cluster data from Chandra and show that although the supernovae alone are not very constraining, they help in reducing the confidence regions. Then we apply our method to future data from LSST and from a survey that approximates the Euclid satellite mission. In this case we show that the combined data are nicely complementary and can constrain the normalization $σ_8$ and the growth rate index $γ$ to within $0.6\%$ and $7\%$, respectively. In particular, the LSST supernova catalog is forecast to give the constraint $γ(σ_8/0.83)^{6.7} = 0.55 \pm 0.1$. We also report on constraints relative to a step-wise parametrization of the growth rate of structures. These results show that supernova lensing serves as a good cross-check on the measurement of perturbation parameters from more standard techniques.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Stable and unstable cosmological models in bimetric massive gravity

Nonlinear, ghost-free massive gravity has two tensor fields; when both are dynamical, the mass of the graviton can lead to cosmic acceleration that agrees with background data, even in the absence of a cosmological constant. Here the question of the stability of linear perturbations in this bimetric theory is examined. Instabilities are presented for several classes of models, and simple criteria for the cosmological stability of massive bigravity are derived. In this way, we identify a particular self-accelerating bigravity model, infinite-branch bigravity (IBB), which exhibits both viable background evolution and stable linear perturbations. We discuss the modified gravity parameters for IBB, which do not reduce to the standard $Λ$CDM result at early times, and compute the combined likelihood from measured growth data and type Ia supernovae. IBB predicts a present matter density $Ω_{m0}=0.18$ and an equation of state $w(z)=-0.79+0.21z/(1+z)$. The growth rate of structure is well-approximated at late times by $f(z)\approxΩ_{m}^{0.47}[1+0.21z/(1+z)]$. The implications of the linear instability for other bigravity models are discussed: the instability does not necessarily rule these models out, but rather presents interesting questions about how to extract observables from them when linear perturbation theory does not hold.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Efficient implementation of the Time Renormalization Group

The Time Renormalization Group (TRG) is an effective method for accurate calculations of the matter power spectrum at the scale of the first baryonic acoustic oscillations. By using a particular variable transformation in the TRG formalism, we can reduce the 2D integral in the source term of the equations of motion for the power spectrum into a series of 1D integrals. The shape of the integrand allows us to pre-compute only thirteen antiderivatives numerically, which can then be reused when evaluating the outer integral. While this introduces a few challenges to keep numerical noise under control, we find that the computation time for nonlinear corrections to the matter power spectrum decreases by a factor of 50. This opens up the possibility to use of TRG for mass production as in Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. A Fortran code demonstrating this new algorithm has been made publicly available.

astro-ph.CO↗