Voids as a probe of modified gravity

• Grant number: 18/11867-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: September 03, 2018
• End date: September 02, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Astronomy
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Vinicius Borges Teixeira Lima
• Grantee: Eder Leonardo Duarte Perico
• Supervisor: David Fonseca Mota
• Host Institution: Instituto de Física (IF). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Oslo (UiO), Norway
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/01721-9 - Voids and Halo Cosmology within Modified Gravity, BP.PD

Abstract

Nowadays N-body cosmological simulations make up the strongest tool to look into the non-linear processes of halo formation and distribution in cosmology. Those overdose structures can be connected to the outcomes of optical surveys through the mass-richness relation. N-body simulations are also the hardcore for building the cluster-galaxy catalogs that are utilized to validate the methods to being applied to real data analysis, as well as to estimate fair covariance matrices for different observables in many surveys. The aim of this project is to explore a set of cosmic voids properties as a Modified Gravity (MG) probe at the level of n-body simulations. Cosmic voids seem to be a natural candidate for distinguishing among MG theories with different screening mechanisms and General Relativity since they are middle sized and have low density. As a first step, we are going to generalize the analysis of the void density profile (which we have already done for the Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ theory with a set of fixed cosmological parameters) in order to include a wide variety of values for the cosmological parameters. This procedure will allow us to distinguishes between General Relativity and MG in a practical way since cosmic voids properties depend both on the standard cosmological parameters, such as the matter fraction or the critical density, and on the modified gravity parameters. In addition to the Hu-Sawick we are going to run and analyze a set of cosmological models such as the symmetron, DGP+DE, the symmetron or the $\gamma$ theories. (AU)