A marked correlation function for constraining modified gravity models
arXiv:1609.08632 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2016/11/057
Abstract
Future large scale structure surveys will provide increasingly tight constraints on our cosmological model. These surveys will report results on the distance scale and growth rate of perturbations through measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Redshift-Space Distortions. It is interesting to ask: what further analyses should become routine, so as to test as-yet-unknown models of cosmic acceleration? Models which aim to explain the accelerated expansion rate of the Universe by modifications to General Relativity often invoke screening mechanisms which can imprint a non-standard density dependence on their predictions. This suggests density-dependent clustering as a `generic' constraint. This paper argues that a density-marked correlation function provides a density-dependent statistic which is easy to compute and report and requires minimal additional infrastructure beyond what is routinely available to such survey analyses. We give one realization of this idea and study it using low order perturbation theory. We encourage groups developing modified gravity theories to see whether such statistics provide discriminatory power for their models.
12 pages, 2 figures. Revised to match version accepted by journal. Discussion expanded, more references added
References in corpus (8)
- Beyond the Cosmological Standard Model
- A primer on hierarchical galaxy formation: the semi-analytical approach
- Improving Cosmological Distance Measurements by Reconstruction of the Baryon Acoustic Peak
- Resumming Cosmological Perturbations via the Lagrangian Picture: One-loop Results in Real Space and in Redshift Space
- Quantifying Cosmic Superstructures
- The Vainshtein Mechanism in the Cosmic Web
- Breaking Halo Occupation Degeneracies with Marked Statistics
- Halo abundances within the cosmic web