The total red shift $z$ might be recast as a combination of the expansion red shift and a static shift due to the energy-momentum tensor non-conservation of a photon propagating through Electro-Magnetic (EM) fields. If massive, the photon may be described by the de Broglie-Proca (dBP) theory which satisfies the Lorentz(-Poincaré) Symmetry (LoSy) but not gauge-invariance. The latter is regained in the Standard-Model Extension (SME), associated with LoSy Violation (LSV) that naturally dresses photons of a mass. The non-conservation stems from the vacuum expectation value of the vector and tensor LSV fields. The final colour (red or blue) and size of the static shift depend on the orientations and strength of the LSV and EM multiple fields encountered along the path of the photon. Turning to cosmology, for a zero $Ω_Λ$ energy density, the discrepancy between luminosity and red shift distances of SNeIa disappears thanks to the recasting of $z$. Massive photons induce an effective dark energy acting `optically' but not dynamically.
We present a thorough analysis of the cosmological perturbations in Generalised Massive Gravity. This is an extension of de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley theory where the translation invariance in the Stückelberg field space is broken. This allows the mass parameters to be promoted to functions of the Stückelberg fields. We consider an exact cosmological background in this theory and study the stability of perturbations. We derive conditions to avoid ghost, gradient and tachyonic instability. The cosmology is an extension of the self-accelerating branch of the constant mass parameter theory, but now a…
It is known that de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley (dRGT) massive gravity does not permit a homogeneous and isotropic universe with flat or spherical spatial metrics. We demonstrate that a singular reference metric solves this problem in an economic and straightforward way. In the dRGT massive gravity with a singular reference metric, there are sound homogeneous and isotropic cosmological solutions. We investigate cosmologies with the static and dynamical singular reference metrics, respectively. The term like dark energy appears naturally and the universe accelerates itself in some late time evolution…
We study the first cosmological implications of the mimetic theory of massive gravity recently proposed by Chamseddine and Mukhanov. This is a novel theory of ghost-free massive gravity which additionally contains a mimetic dark matter component. In an echo of other modified gravity theories, there are self-accelerating solutions which contain a ghost instability. In the ghost-free region of parameter space, the effect of the graviton mass on the cosmic expansion history amounts to an effective negative cosmological constant, a radiation component, and a negative curvature term. This allows us…
Production of massive stable relics in $R^2$-modified gravity is considered. It is shown that the cosmological evolution and kinetics of massive species differs significantly from those in the conventional cosmology. The results are applied to the lightest supersymmetric particles and it is argued that they are viable candidates for the constituents of dark matter, if their mass is about 1000 TeV.
Boltzmann solvers are an important tool for the computation of cosmological observables in the linear regime. In the presence of massive neutrinos, they involve solving the Boltzmann equation followed by an integration in momentum space to arrive at the desired fluid properties, a procedure which is known to be computationally slow. In this work we introduce the so-called generalized Boltzmann hierarchy (GBH) for massive neutrinos in cosmology, an alternative to the usual Boltzmann hierarchy, where the momentum dependence is integrated out leaving us with a two-parameter infinite set of ordina…
The idea of gauge theories of gravity predicts that there should exist not only the massless graviton but also massive particles carrying the gravitational force. We study the cosmology in a quadratic gravity with dynamical torsion where gravity may be interpreted as a gauge force associated with the Poincaré group. In addition to the massless spin-2 graviton, the model contains four non-ghost massive particle species: a couple of spin-0, a spin-1 and a spin-2. Supposing the restoration of the local Weyl invariance in the UV limit and the parity invariance, we find the most general minisupersp…
The past 50 years has seen cosmology go from a field known for the errors being in the exponents to precision science. The transformation, powered by ideas, technology, a paradigm shift and culture change, has revolutionized our understanding of the Universe, with the $Λ$CDM paradigm as its crowning achievement. I chronicle the journey of precision cosmology and finish with my thoughts about what lies ahead.
We study the cosmological evolution of a scalar field in Horndeski gravity, assuming that the scalar field is subdominant with respect to the cosmic fluid. We first analyse the most general shift-symmetric action that respects local Lorentz symmetry. We show that the bound on the speed of gravitational waves set by GW170817+GRB170817A imposes a constraint only on the linear coupling between the scalar and the Gauss-Bonnet invariant and this constraint is rather mild. Then, we consider some interesting examples of theories that break shift-symmetry, such as the Damour-Esposito-Farèse model of s…
Providing accurate predictions for the spatial distribution of matter and luminous tracers in the presence of massive neutrinos is an important task, given the imminent arrival of highly accurate large-scale structure observations. In this work, we address this challenge by extending cosmology-rescaling algorithms to massive neutrino cosmologies. In this way, a $Λ$CDM simulation can be modified to provide nonlinear structure formation predictions in the presence a hot component of arbitrary mass, and, if desired, to include non-gravitational modifications to the clustering of matter on large s…
Nonstandard self-interactions can alter the evolution of cosmological neutrinos, mainly by damping free streaming, which should leave traces in cosmological observables. Although overall effects are opposite to those produced by neutrino mass and a larger $N_{\rm eff}$, they cannot be totally canceled by these last. We harness cosmological data that includes Cosmic Microwave Background from Plank 2018, BAO measurements, local $H_0$, Ly-$α$ and SNIa, to constrain massive neutrino self-interactions with a very light scalar mediator. We find that the effective coupling constant, at the 95\% C.L.,…
El Gordo (ACT-CL J0102-4915) is an extremely massive galaxy cluster ($M_{200} \approx 3 \times 10^{15}$ $M_{\odot}$) at redshift $z = 0.87 $ composed of two subclusters with mass ratio 3.6 merging at speed $V_{infall} \approx 2500$ km/s. Such a fast collision between individually rare massive clusters is unexpected in Lambda cold dark matter ($Λ$CDM) cosmology at such high $z$. However, this is required for non-cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of the merger to match its observed properties (Zhang et al. 2015). Here, we determine the probability of finding a similar object in a $Λ$CDM co…
In this paper, we simulate Super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs) as the candles to probe cosmology for the first time. SEAMBHs have been demonstrated to be able to provide a new tool for estimating cosmological distance. Thus, we create a series of mock data sets of SEAMBHs, especially in the high redshift region, to check their abilities to probe the cosmology. To fulfill the potential of the SEAMBHs on the cosmology, we apply the simulated data to three projects. The first is the exploration of their abilities to constrain the cosmological parameters, in which we combine di…
We have updated the constraints on flavour universal neutrino self-interactions mediated by a heavy scalar, in the effective 4-fermion interaction limit. We use the relaxation time approximation to modify the collisional neutrino Boltzmann equations, which is known to be very accurate for this particular scenario. Based on the latest CMB data from the Planck 2018 data release as well as auxiliary data we confirm the presence of a region in parameter space with relatively strong self-interactions which provides a better than naively expected fit. However, we also find that the most recent data,…
Scalar fields provide attractive modifications of pre-BBN cosmology, which have interesting implications for dark matter abundances. We analyse the effect of these modifications on the number of e-foldings between horizon exit of CMB modes and the end of inflation $(N_k)$, and examine the consequences for inflationary predictions of various models. We find significant effects in the predictions in the $(n_s, r)$ plane. For a large part of the parameter space, the shift in $N_k$ is positive; this ameliorates the tension of $m^{2} φ^{2}$ and natural inflation with data.
Many statistical models in cosmology can be simulated forwards but have intractable likelihood functions. Likelihood-free inference methods allow us to perform Bayesian inference from these models using only forward simulations, free from any likelihood assumptions or approximations. Likelihood-free inference generically involves simulating mock data and comparing to the observed data; this comparison in data-space suffers from the curse of dimensionality and requires compression of the data to a small number of summary statistics to be tractable. In this paper we use massive asymptotically-op…
