The constraints on departures from general relativity (GR) at cosmological length scales due to cosmic microwave background (CMB) data are discussed. The departure from GR is measured by the ratio, parameterized as $1 +\varpi_0 (1 + z)^{-S}$, between the gravitational potentials conventionally appearing in the geodesic equation and the Poisson equation. Current CMB data indicate $\varpi_0=1.67^{+3.07}_{-1.87}$ at the 2$σ$ confidence level, while $S$ remains unconstrained. The departure from GR affects the lensing conversion of E-mode into B-mode polarization. Hence, the lensing measurements from a future CMBpol experiment should be able to improve the constraints to $\varpi_0< 0.30$ for a fiducial $\varpi_0=0$ model and independent of $S$.
We use a range of cosmological data to constrain phenomenological modifications to general relativity on cosmological scales, through modifications to the Poisson and lensing equations. We include cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements from the Planck satellite, cosmic shear from CFHTLenS and DES-SV, and redshift-space distortions from BOSS data release 12 and the 6dF galaxy survey. We find no evidence of departures from general relativity, with the modified gravity parameters constrained to $Σ_0 = 0.05^{+0.05}_{-0.07}$ and $μ_0 = -0.10^{+0.20}_{-0.16}$, where $Σ_0$ and $μ_0$ refe…
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are highly dispersed and probably extragalactic radio flashes with millisecond-duration. Recently, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (using the CHIME/FRB instrument) has reported detections of 13 FRBs during a pre-commissioning phase. It is more exciting that one of the 13 FRBs is a second source of repeaters which suggests that CHIME/FRB and other wide-field sensitive radio telescopes will find a substantial population of repeating FRBs. We have proposed strongly lensed repeating FRBs as a precision cosmological probe, e.g. constraining the Hubble con…
We demonstrate how to obtain optimal constraints on a primordial gravitational wave component in lensed Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data under ideal conditions. We first derive an estimator of the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, by using an error-controlled close approximation to the exact posterior, under the assumption of Gaussian primordial CMB and lensing deflection potential. This combines fast internal iterative lensing reconstruction with optimal recovery of the unlensed CMB. We evaluate its performance on simulated low-noise polarization data targeted at the recombination peak. We c…
It has been shown that time delay of strong gravitational lensing is not only an effective cosmological probe to constrain the Hubble constant, the matter density and the curvature of the universe but also useful for breaking the degeneracy of the dark energy equation of state and thus provide complementarity with other popular probes, such as type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, and cosmic microwave background radiation. Interestingly, compared to traditional strong lensing systems where quasars act as sources, strongly lensed gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary coalesc…
We present the optimal convergence and shear estimators for lensing reconstruction from the cosmic microwave background temperature field. This generalizes the deflection estimator, is sensitive to non-lensing modes, provides internal consistency checks, and is always at least as optimal. Previously, these estimators were only known in the squeezed limit. This paper decomposes convergence and shear fields into cosine and sine waves and the lensed correlation function is then Taylor expanded in the wave amplitudes. Maximizing the likelihood function gives the optimal estimators for the converge…
General relativity (GR) predicts concordant trajectories for photons and gravitational waves (GW). We propose a new multi-messenger avenue (GW-CMB-CMB) to prove this aspect of fundamental physics by cross-correlating the GW signal of astrophysical origin with the lensing field derived from the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This new window will allow robust measurement of the prediction from GR with high signal-to-noise and will be able to unveil the true nature of gravity using the GW sources detected by missions such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), Einstein Telescope an…
The rapid accumulation of observed Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) originating from cosmological distances makes it likely that some will be strongly lensed by intervening matter along the line of sight. Detection of lensed FRB repeaters, which account for a noteworthy fraction of the total population, will allow not only an accurate measurement of the lensing time delay, but also follow-up high-resolution observations to pinpoint the location of the lensed images. Recent works proposed to use such strongly-lensed FRBs to derive constraints on the current expansion rate $ H_{0} $ as well as on cosmic…
We present 500 high-resolution, full-sky millimeter-wave Deep Learning (DL) simulations that include lensed CMB maps and correlated foreground components. We find that these MillimeterDL simulations can reproduce a wide range of non-Gaussian summary statistics matching the input training simulations, while only being optimized to match the power spectra. The procedure we develop in this work enables the capability to mass produce independent full-sky realizations from a single expensive full-sky simulation, when ordinarily the latter would not provide enough training data. We also circumvent a…
We develop a method of reconstructing the lensing field from lensed CMB temperature and polarization maps in real space as an alternative to the harmonic space estimators currently in use by extending an existing real space lensing estimator for temperature to polarization. Real space estimators have the advantage of being local in nature and they are thus equipped to deal with the nonuniform sky coverage, especially galactic cuts and point source excisions, found in experimental data. We characterize some of the properties and limitations of these estimators and test them on simulated maps wi…
Identifying galaxy clusters through overdensities of galaxies in photometric surveys is the oldest and arguably the most economic and mass-sensitive detection method, compared to X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect surveys that detect the hot intracluster medium. However, a perennial problem has been the mapping of optical 'richness' measurements on to total cluster mass. Emitted at a conformal distance of 14 Gpc, the cosmic microwave background acts as a backlight to all intervening mass in the Universe, and therefore has been gravitationally lensed. Here we present a calibration of cluster o…
Intensity maps of the 21cm emission line of neutral hydrogen are lensed by intervening large-scale structure, similar to the lensing of the cosmic microwave background temperature map. We extend previous work by calculating the lensing contribution to the full-sky 21cm bispectrum in redshift space. The lensing contribution tends to peak when equal-redshift fluctuations are lensed by a lower redshift fluctuation. At high redshift, lensing effects can become comparable to the contributions from density and redshift-space distortions.
We present a measurement of the $B$-mode polarization power spectrum (the $BB$ spectrum) from 100 $\mathrm{deg}^2$ of sky observed with SPTpol, a polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope. The observations used in this work were taken during 2012 and early 2013 and include data in spectral bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. We report the $BB$ spectrum in five bins in multipole space, spanning the range $300 \le \ell \le 2300$, and for three spectral combinations: 95 GHz $\times$ 95 GHz, 95 GHz $\times$ 150 GHz, and 150 GHz $\times$ 150 GHz. We subtract smal…
We address a current caveat in the deconvolution of the Primordial Power Spectrum (PPS), from observed Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy, in the presence of weak lensing of the CMB by the large scale structure (LSS) in the Universe. Richardson-Lucy (RL) deconvolution algorithm has been used in the context of reconstructing a free-form PPS, $P_R(k)$ from the observed lensed CMB temperature anisotropy power spectrum $\widetilde{C}_{\ell}^{TT}$. We propose and demonstrate that the RL algorithm works in the context of a non-linear convolution where the non-linear contributio…
Prospect of Measuring the Cosmic Dipole by Associating Strongly Lensed Gravitational Waves with Galaxy Surveys
International Center for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（国际理论物理中心亚太，中国科学院大学）；Taiji Laboratory for Gravitational Wave Universe, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（太极引力波宇宙实验室，中国科学院大学）
The detection of the magnetic type $B$-mode polarization is the main goal of future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. In the standard model, the $B$-mode map is a strongly non-gaussian field due to the lensed component. Besides the two-point correlation function, the other statistics are also very important to dig the information of the polarization map. In this paper, we employ the Minkowski functionals to study the morphological properties of the lensed $B$-mode maps. We find that the deviations from Gaussianity are very significant for both full and partial-sky surveys. As an a…
In general relativity (GR), gravitational waves (GWs) propagate the well-known plus and cross polarization modes which are the signature of a massless spin-2 field. However, diffraction of GWs caused by intervening objects along the line of sight can cause the apparent rise of additional polarizations due to GW-curvature interactions. In this paper, we continue the analysis by two of the authors of the present article, on lensing of gravitational waves beyond geometric optics. In particular, we calculate the lensing effect caused by a point-like lens, in the regime where its Schwarzschild radi…
Upcoming measurements of the small-scale primary cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization power spectra ($TT$/$TE$/$EE$) are anticipated to yield transformative constraints on new physics, including the effective number of relativistic species in the early universe ($N_{\rm eff}$). However, at multipoles $\ell \gtrsim 3000$, the primary CMB power spectra receive significant contributions from gravitational lensing. While these modes still carry primordial information, their theoretical modeling requires knowledge of the CMB lensing convergence power spectrum, $C_L^{κκ}$, …
The angular positions of quasars are deflected by the gravitational lensing effect of foreground matter. The Lyman-alpha forest seen in the spectra of these quasars is therefore also lensed. We propose that the signature of weak gravitational lensing of the forest could be measured using similar techniques that have been applied to the lensed Cosmic Microwave Background, and which have also been proposed for application to spectral data from 21cm radio telescopes. As with 21cm data, the forest has the advantage of spectral information, potentially yielding many lensed "slices" at different red…
The theory of general relativity, for which we celebrate the centennial at this Symposium, is based on the Einstein equivalence principle. This principle could be violated through a pseudoscalar-photon interaction, which would also produce a rotation of the polarization angle for radiation traveling over very long distances. Therefore, if we could show that this cosmic polarization rotation does not exist, our confindence in general relativity would be greatly increased. We review here the astrophysical searches for cosmic polarization rotation, which have been made in the past 26 years using …
Gravitational waves (GW), as light, are gravitationally lensed by intervening matter, deflecting their trajectories, delaying their arrival and occasionally producing multiple images. In theories beyond general relativity (GR), new gravitational degrees of freedom add an extra layer of complexity and richness to GW lensing. We develop a formalism to compute GW propagation beyond GR over general space-times, including kinetic interactions with new fields. Our framework relies on identifying the dynamical propagation eigenstates (linear combinations of the metric and additional fields) at leadin…
We investigate weak lensing effect on cosmic microwave background (CMB) in the presence of dipole anisotropy. The approach of flat-sky approximation is considered. We determine the functions $σ_0^2$ and $σ_2^2$ that appear in expressions of the lensed CMB power spectrum in the presence of a dipole anisotropy. We determine the correction to B-mode power spectrum which is found to be appreciable at low multipoles ($l$). However, the temperature and E-mode power spectrum are not altered significantly.
[Abridged] Recent results from the BICEP, Keck Array and Planck Collaborations demonstrate that Galactic foregrounds are an unavoidable obstacle in the search for evidence of inflationary gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization. Beyond the foregrounds, the effect of lensing by intervening large-scale structure further obscures all but the strongest inflationary signals permitted by current data. With a plethora of ongoing and upcoming experiments aiming to measure these signatures, careful and self-consistent consideration of experiments' foreground- and lensi…
Discovery of strongly-lensed gravitational wave (GW) sources will unveil binary compact objects at higher redshifts and lower intrinsic luminosities than is possible without lensing. Such systems will yield unprecedented constraints on the mass distribution in galaxy clusters, measurements of the polarization of GWs, tests of General Relativity, and constraints on the Hubble parameter. Excited by these prospects, and intrigued by the presence of so-called "heavy black holes" in the early detections by LIGO-Virgo, we commenced a search for strongly-lensed GWs and possible electromagnetic counte…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is gravitationally lensed by large-scale structure, which distorts observations of the primordial anisotropies in any given direction. Averaged over the sky, this important effect is routinely modelled with the lensed CMB power spectra. This accounts for the variance of this distortion, where the leading variance effect is quadratic in the lensing deflections. However, we show that if bright extragalactic sources correlated with the large-scale structure are masked in a CMB map, the power spectrum measured over the unmasked area using a standard pseudo-$C_…
Probing the relative speeds of gravitational waves and light acts as an important test of General Relativity and alternative theories of gravity. Measuring the arrival time of gravitational waves and electromagnetic counterparts can be used to measure the relative speeds, but only if the intrinsic time-lag between emission of the photons and gravitational waves is well understood. Here we suggest a method that does not make such an assumption, using future strongly lensed GW events and EM counterparts; Biesiada et al forecast that 50-100 strongly lensed GW events will be observed each year wit…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lensing is a powerful probe of the matter distribution in the Universe. The standard quadratic estimator, which is typically used to measure the lensing signal, is known to be suboptimal for low-noise polarization data from next-generation experiments. In this paper we explain why the quadratic estimator will also be suboptimal for measuring lensing on very small scales, even for measurements in temperature where this estimator typically performs well. Though maximum likelihood methods could be implemented to improve performance, we explore a much simpler solu…
Strong gravitational lensing by galaxies provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the nature of gravity on galactic and extra-galactic scales. In this paper, we propose a new multimessenger approach using data from both gravitational wave (GW) and the corresponding electromagnetic (EM) counterpart to infer the constraint of the modified gravity (MG) theory denoted by the scale dependent phenomenological parameter. To demonstrate the robustness of this approach, we calculate the time-delay predictions by choosing various values of the phenomenological parameters and then compare them…
Prior to photon decoupling magnetic random fields of comoving intensity in the nano-Gauss range distort the temperature and the polarization anisotropies of the microwave background, potentially induce a peculiar B-mode power spectrum and may even generate a frequency-dependent circularly polarized V-mode. We critically analyze the theoretical foundations and the recent achievements of an interesting trialogue involving plasma physics, general relativity and astrophysics.
We explore the Minkowski functionals of weak lensing convergence map to distinguish between $f(R)$ gravity and the general relativity (GR). The mock weak lensing convergence maps are constructed with a set of high-resolution simulations assuming different gravity models. It is shown that the lensing MFs of $f(R)$ gravity can be considerably different from that of GR because of the environmentally dependent enhancement of structure formation. We also investigate the effect of lensing noise on our results, and find that it is likely to distinguish F5, F6 and GR gravity models with a galaxy surve…
Measurements of time-delay cosmography of lensed quasars can provide an independent probe to explore the expansion history of the late-time Universe. In this paper, we employ the time-delay cosmography measurements from seven lenses (here abbreviated as the TD data) to constrain interacting dark energy (IDE) models. We mainly focus on the scenario of vacuum energy (with $w=-1$) interacting with cold dark matter, and consider four typical cases of the interaction form $Q$. When the TD data alone are employed, we find that the IDE models with $Q\propto ρ_{\rm de}$ seem to have an advantage in re…
The Planck satellite, along with several ground based telescopes, have mapped the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at sufficient resolution and signal-to-noise so as to allow a detection of the subtle distortions due to the gravitational influence of the intervening matter distribution. A natural modeling approach is to write a Bayesian hierarchical model for the lensed CMB in terms of the unlensed CMB and the lensing potential. So far there has been no feasible algorithm for inferring the posterior distribution of the lensing potential from the lensed CMB map. We propose a solution that allo…
The cosmic infrared background (CIB) is gravitationally lensed. A quadratic-estimator technique that is inherited from lensing analyses of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be applied to detect the CIB lensing effects. However, the CIB fluctuations are intrinsically strongly non-Gaussian, making CIB lensing reconstruction highly biased. We perform numerical simulations to estimate the intrinsic non-Gaussianity and establish a cross-correlation approach to precisely extract the CIB lensing signal from raw data. We apply this technique to CIB data from the Planck satellite and cross-corr…
Assessing the probability that two or more gravitational waves (GWs) are lensed images of the same source requires an understanding of the image properties, including their relative phase shifts in strong lensing (SL). For non-precessing, circular binaries dominated by quadrupole radiation these phase shifts are degenerate with either a shift in the coalescence phase or a detector and inclination dependent shift in the orientation angle. This degeneracy is broken by the presence of higher harmonic modes with $|m|\ne 2$ in the former and $|m| \ne l$ in the latter. Precession or eccentricity wil…
We compare Einstein-Boltzmann solvers that include modifications to General Relativity and find that, for a wide range of models and parameters, they agree to a high level of precision. We look at three general purpose codes that primarily model general scalar-tensor theories, three codes that model Jordan-Brans-Dicke (JBD) gravity, a code that models f(R) gravity, a code that models covariant Galileons, a code that models Hořava-Lifschitz gravity and two codes that model non-local models of gravity. Comparing predictions of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background and the…
Many extensions of Einstein's theory of gravity have been studied and proposed with various motivations like the quest for a quantum theory of gravity to extensions of anomalies in observations at the solar system, galactic and cosmological scales. These extensions include adding higher powers of Ricci curvature $R$, coupling the Ricci curvature with scalar fields and generalized functions of $R$. In addition when viewed from the perspective of Supergravity (SUGRA) many of these theories may originate from the same SUGRA theory interpreted in different frames. SUGRA therefore serves as a good …
Observations of galaxy-scale strong gravitational lensing (SGL) systems have enabled unique tests of nonlinear departures from general relativity (GR) on the galactic and supergalactic scales. One of the most important cases of such tests is constraints on the gravitational slip between two scalar gravitational potentials. In this paper, we use a newly compiled sample of strong gravitational lenses to test the validity of GR, focusing on the screening effects on the apparent positions of lensed sources relative to the GR predictions. This is the first simultaneous measurement of the Post-Newto…
We apply our tetrad-based approach for constructing spherically-symmetric solutions in general relativity to modelling a void, and compare it with the standard Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi (LTB) formalism. In particular, we construct models for the void observed in the direction of Draco in the WISE-2MASS galaxy survey, and a corresponding cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature decrement in the Planck data in the same direction. We find that the present-day density and velocity profiles of the void are not well constrained by the existing data, so that void models produced from the two approac…
We perform large-scale cosmological simulations that solve Einstein's equations directly via numerical relativity. Starting with initial conditions sampled from the cosmic microwave background, we track the emergence of a cosmic web without the need for a background cosmology. We measure the backreaction of large-scale structure on the evolution of averaged quantities in a matter-dominated universe. Although our results are preliminary, we find the global backreaction energy density is of order $10^{-8}$ compared to the energy density of matter in our simulations, and is thus unlikely to expla…
We present a measurement of the Hubble constant ($H_{0}$) and other cosmological parameters from a joint analysis of six gravitationally lensed quasars with measured time delays. All lenses except the first are analyzed blindly with respect to the cosmological parameters. In a flat $Λ$CDM cosmology, we find $H_{0} = 73.3_{-1.8}^{+1.7}$, a 2.4% precision measurement, in agreement with local measurements of $H_{0}$ from type Ia supernovae calibrated by the distance ladder, but in $3.1σ$ tension with $Planck$ observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This method is completely indepen…
