arXiv subjects

N. Grimm

Publications and source records attributed to N. Grimm.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Beyond {\Lambda}CDM with the SKA Observatory -- I: Probing Gravity on Cosmological Scales

General relativity (GR) is currently the best description of the gravitational interaction at our disposal and is one of the foundations of the concordance cosmological model. For as much as we know that GR is not the final theory of gravitation - we still lack an understanding of its fundamental, quantum nature - it has demonstrated a remarkable success in describing observed phenomena and predicting effects that have later been confirmed by laboratory experiments or astronomical observations. Since gravity is extremely weak compared to the other three fundamental interactions, it has so far been tested with exquisite precision only in the strong-field regime. On the immense scales of the cosmos, on the other hand, the gravitational field is extremely weak and spacetime curvature is almost negligible. But crucially, it is on these scales that we see hints at the need for exotic components, such as dark matter and dark energy. The question of whether they really exist or their presence is but an artefact of the incompleteness of our understanding of gravity on cosmological scales then naturally arises. It is therefore paramount to test the validity of GR on these scales, either to further confirm its robustness or to detect deviations that could lead us to the formulation of a more general and conclusive theory of gravitation. To this purpose, the SKA Observatory is especially suited, thanks both to the enormous volumes it will probe, and to the variety and complementarity of cosmological observables that its surveys will make available to us.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Combining chirp mass, luminosity distance and sky localisation from gravitational wave events to detect the cosmic dipole

A key test of the isotropy of the Universe on large scales consists in comparing the dipole in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature with the dipole in the distribution of sources at low redshift. Current analyses find a dipole in the number counts of quasars and radio sources that is 2-5 times larger than expected from the CMB, leading to a tension reaching 5$σ$. In this paper, we derive a consistent framework to measure the dipole independently from gravitational wave (GW) detections. We exploit the fact that the observer velocity does not only change the distribution of events in the sky, but also the luminosity distance and redshifted chirp mass, that can be extracted from the GW waveform. We show that the estimator with higher signal-to-noise ratio is the dipole in the chirp mass measured from a population of binary neutron stars. Combining all estimators (accounting for their covariance) improves the detectability of the dipole by 30-50 percent compared to number counting of binary black holes alone. We find that a few $10^6$ events are necessary to detect a dipole consistent with the CMB one, whereas if the dipole is as large as predicted by radio sources, it will already be detectable with $10^5$ events, which would correspond to a single year of observation with next generation GW detectors. GW sources provide therefore a robust and independent way of testing the isotropy of the Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗