Positivity Bounds on Dark Energy: When Matter Matters

Abstract

Positivity bounds - constraints on any low-energy effective field theory imposed by the fundamental axioms of unitarity, causality and locality in the UV - have recently been used to constrain scalar-tensor theories of dark energy. However, the coupling to matter fields has so far played a limited role. We show that demanding positivity when including interactions with standard matter fields leads to further constraints on the dark energy parameter space. We demonstrate how implementing these bounds as theoretical priors affects cosmological parameter constraints and explicitly illustrate the impact on a specific Effective Field Theory for dark energy. We also show in this model that the existence of a standard UV completion requires that gravitational waves must travel superluminally on cosmological backgrounds.

arXiv comment14+6 pages, 2 figures; v2: minor clarifications added, matches published version

References in corpus (114)

• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger
• Gravitational Waves and Gamma-rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A
• The Cosmic Linear Anisotropy Solving System (CLASS) II: Approximation schemes
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 10 and 11 galaxy samples
• The Clustering of the SDSS DR7 Main Galaxy Sample I: A 4 per cent Distance Measure at z=0.15
• Cosmological Constraints from the SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
• Generalized G-inflation: Inflation with the most general second-order field equations
• Massive Gravity
• Covariant Galileon
• Causality, Analyticity and an IR Obstruction to UV Completion
• Dark Energy after GW170817: dead ends and the road ahead
• Strong constraints on cosmological gravity from GW170817 and GRB 170817A
• Conservative Constraints on Early Cosmology: an illustration of the Monte Python cosmological parameter inference code
• Dark Energy after GW170817 and GRB170817A
• Implications of the Neutron Star Merger GW170817 for Cosmological Scalar-Tensor Theories
• Planck 2015 results. XI. CMB power spectra, likelihoods, and robustness of parameters
• Strong Interactions and Stability in the DGP Model
• The 6dF Galaxy Survey: z \approx 0 measurement of the growth rate and sigma_8
• The Effective Field Theory of Dark Energy
• Classical and Quantum Consistency of the DGP Model
• Maximal freedom at minimum cost: linear large-scale structure in general modifications of gravity
• Essential Building Blocks of Dark Energy
• Breaking a Dark Degeneracy with Gravitational Waves
• Dark Energy or Modified Gravity? An Effective Field Theory Approach
• Planck 2015 results. XV. Gravitational lensing
• The Clustering of Galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS): measuring growth rate and geometry with anisotropic clustering
• Galileon inflation
• Challenges to Self-Acceleration in Modified Gravity from Gravitational Waves and Large-Scale Structure
• DBI and the Galileon reunited
• Effective Field Theory of Cosmic Acceleration: an implementation in CAMB
• Gravitational Rainbows: LIGO and Dark Energy at its Cutoff
• Energy's and amplitudes' positivity
• A unifying description of dark energy
• Positive Moments for Scattering Amplitudes
• UV-Completion by Classicalization
• The Imperfect Fluid behind Kinetic Gravity Braiding
• New positivity bounds from full crossing symmetry
• Effective Field Theory of Dark Energy: a Review
• Positivity Bounds for Scalar Theories
• Sharp Boundaries for the Swampland
• Extremal Effective Field Theories
• Effective Field Theory of Cosmic Acceleration: constraining dark energy with CMB data
• Effective Description of Higher-Order Scalar-Tensor Theories
• hi_class: Horndeski in the Cosmic Linear Anisotropy Solving System
• Softness and Amplitudes' Positivity for Spinning Particles
• Generalized framework for testing gravity with gravitational-wave propagation. II. Constraints on Horndeski theory
• UV complete me: Positivity Bounds for Particles with Spin
• Crossing Symmetric Dispersion Relations in QFTs
• Signs of Analyticity in Single-Field Inflation
• The Observational Future of Cosmological Scalar-Tensor Theories
• The observational status of Galileon gravity after Planck
• Non-Renormalization and Naturalness in a Class of Scalar-Tensor Theories
• Quantum Gravity Constraints from Unitarity and Analyticity
• Massive Galileon Positivity Bounds
• Positivity Bounds for Massive Spin-1 and Spin-2 Fields
• Consistency of the Chiral Pion-Pion Scattering Amplitudes with Axiomatic Constraints
• Weakly Broken Galileon Symmetry
• Symmetries, Sum Rules and Constraints on Effective Field Theories
• Improved Positivity Bounds and Massive Gravity
• Cosmological parameter constraints for Horndeski scalar-tensor gravity
• Riding on irrelevant operators
• Positivity Bounds and the Massless Spin-2 Pole
• Reconstructing Gravity on Cosmological Scales
• The Chiral Lagrangian parameters, ${\overline{\ell }}_1$, ${\overline{\ell }}_2$, are determined by the $\rho$--resonance
• Positive Signs in Massive Gravity
• The Speed of Gravity
• Cosmological Constraints on Horndeski Gravity in Light of GW170817
• Dark-Energy Instabilities induced by Gravitational Waves
• QED positivity bounds
• Effective Theory of Dark Energy at Redshift Survey Scales
• Positivity in the sky
• Positivity Constraints for Pseudo-linear Massive Spin-2 and Vector Galileons
• Causality in Curved Spacetimes: The Speed of Light & Gravity
• Dispersion Relation Bounds for pi pi Scattering
• Dynamics of Unitarization by Classicalization
• hi_class: Background Evolution, Initial Conditions and Approximation Schemes
• Classicalization of Gravitons and Goldstones
• KiDS+GAMA: Constraints on Horndeski gravity from combined large-scale structure probes
• Effective field theory approach to modified gravity including Horndeski theory and Hořava-Lifshitz gravity
• Tree-Level Unitarity Constraints on the Gravitational Couplings of Higher-Spin Massive Fields
• A general theory of linear cosmological perturbations: scalar-tensor and vector-tensor theories
• Designing Horndeski and the effective fluid approach
• Constraining Scalar-Tensor Modified Gravity with Gravitational Waves and Large Scale Structure Surveys
• The road ahead of Horndeski: cosmology of surviving scalar-tensor theories
• Cosmological constraints on dark energy in light of gravitational wave bounds
• Testing (modified) gravity with 3D and tomographic cosmic shear
• A general theory of linear cosmological perturbations: stability conditions, the quasistatic limit and dynamics
• Constraints on modified gravity from Planck 2015: when the health of your theory makes the difference
• Optimising growth of structure constraints on modified gravity
• Neutron star merger GW170817 strongly constrains doubly coupled bigravity
• Testing Gravity on Cosmic Scales: A Case Study of Jordan-Brans-Dicke Theory
• Causal vs. Analytic constraints on anomalous quartic gauge couplings
• Massive Spin-5/2 Fields Coupled to Gravity: Tree-Level Unitarity vs. the Equivalence Principle
• Causality in gravitational theories with second order equations of motion
• Observational signatures of the theories beyond Horndeski
• Forecasts on the speed of gravitational waves at high $z$
• Constraints on Chiral Perturbation Theory Parameters from QCD Inequalities
• UV properties of Galileons: Spectral Densities
• Suppressing Quantum Fluctuations in Classicalization
• Investigating scalar-tensor-gravity with statistics of the cosmic large-scale structure
• Classicalize or not to Classicalize?
• Non-trivial gravitational waves and structure formation phenomenology from dark energy
• Dark energy survivals in massive gravity after GW170817: SO(3) invariant
• Horndeski under the quantum loupe
• Constraining the cosmological evolution of scalar-tensor theories with local measurements of the time variation of G
• Classicalization and Unitarity
• Radiative stability and observational constraints on dark energy and modified gravity
• Parameterised post-Newtonian formalism for the effective field theory of dark energy via screened reconstructed Horndeski theories
• Modified Gravity Away from a $\Lambda$CDM Background
• Scalar-tensor cosmologies without screening
• Positivity bounds on reconstructed Horndeski models
• Signs of analyticity in fermion scattering

Cited by in corpus (33)

• Reverse Bootstrapping: IR lessons for UV physics
• Natural Selection Rules: New Positivity Bounds for Massive Spinning Particles
• Causal Effective Field Theories
• Triple crossing positivity bounds for multi-field theories
• Asymptotic Safety: Swampland or Wonderland?
• Moments for positivity: using Drell-Yan data to test positivity bounds and reverse-engineer new physics
• Fast and accurate predictions of the nonlinear matter power spectrum for general models of Dark Energy and Modified Gravity
• Testing gravitational wave propagation with multiband detections
• UV graviton scattering and positivity bounds from IR dispersion relations
• Positivity bounds from multiple vacua and their cosmological consequences
• $\text{Hi-COLA}$: Fast, approximate simulations of structure formation in Horndeski gravity
• Nonperturbative Bounds on Scattering of Massive Scalar Particles in $d\ge 2$
• Scalar Fields Near Compact Objects: Resummation versus UV Completion
• Cosmology of Extended Proca-Nuevo
• Probing the speed of gravity with LVK, LISA, and joint observations
• The shape of Scalar Gauss-Bonnet Gravity
• Bounds on photon scattering
• Spinning Sum Rules for the Dimension-Six SMEFT
• Causality and quasi-normal modes in the GREFT
• Positivity Bounds on parity-violating scalar-tensor EFTs
• Positivity bounds in vector theories
• Are $f(R,\mathrm{Matter})$ theories really relevant to cosmology?
• Gravity-Induced Photon Interactions and Infrared Consistency in any Dimensions
• On tachyonic stability priors for dark energy
• A particle's perspective on screening mechanisms
• Bispectrum Islands
• Positivity bounds at one-loop level: the Higgs sector
• The Stringy Origins of Galileons and their Novel Limit
• How Much NEC Breaking Can the Universe Endure?
• Causality, unitarity and stability in quantum gravity: a non-perturbative perspective
• Propagator positivity bounds for cosmological correlators
• Dark energy constraints in light of theoretical priors
• Cosmic acceleration from string induced Galileons