Probing modified gravity in cosmic filaments

¹ Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics (ITA), University of Oslo, 0315, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: alex.ho@astro.uio.no
² Department of Physics, University of California, 93106 Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Received: 18 July 2018
Accepted: 10 September 2018

Abstract

Multiple modifications of general relativity (GR) have been proposed in the literature in order to understand the nature of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. However, thus far all the predictions of GR have been confirmed with constantly increasing accuracy. In this work, we study the imprints of a particular class of models – “screened” modified gravity theories – on cosmic filaments. We have utilized the N-body code ISIS/RAMSES to simulate the symmetron model and the Hu–Sawicky f(R) model, and we post-process the output with DisPerSE to identify the filaments of the cosmic web. We investigated how the global properties of the filaments – such as their lengths, masses, and thicknesses – as well as their radial density and speed profiles change under different gravity theories. We find that filaments are, on average, shorter and denser in modified gravity models compared to in ΛCDM. We also find that the speed profiles of the filaments are enhanced, consistent with theoretical expectations. Overall, our results suggest that cosmic filaments can be an effective complementary probe of screened modified gravity theories on Mpc scales.