Robustness of the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich power spectrum shape as a cosmological gravity probe

Abstract

We prove from the modified gravity (MG) galaxy/halo mock catalogs that the shape of the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) power spectrum $P_{\mathrm{kSZ}}$ has constraining power on discriminating different gravity theories on cosmological scales. By varying the effective optical depth ${\tau }_{\mathrm{T}}$ as a free parameter, we verify that the ${\tau }_{\mathrm{T}}$-$f$ (the linear growth rate) degeneracy in the linear theory of $P_{\mathrm{kSZ}}$ is broken down by the non-linear structure growth and the scale-dependence of $f$ in some MG theories. Equivalently speaking, the shape of $P_{\mathrm{kSZ}}$ alone could be used to constrain the MG theories on cosmological scales. With a good knowledge of galaxy density biases, we verify that, a combination of the next generation of CMB and galaxy spectroscopic redshift surveys, e.g. BOSS+CMB-S4 or DESI+CMB-S4, could potentially discriminate $f(R)$ models from the general relativity at $\sim 5\sigma$ level using the shape of the galaxy pairwise kSZ dipole $P_{\mathrm{kSZ},\ell =1}$ alone, when $f_{R0}=10^{-4}$.

ApJ accepted