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We show that Solar System tests can place very strong constraints on K-mouflage models of gravity, which are coupled scalar field models with nontrivial kinetic terms that screen the fifth force in regions of large gravitational acceleration. In particular, the bounds on the anomalous perihelion of the Moon imposes stringent restrictions on the K-mouflage Lagrangian density, which can be met when the contributions of higher-order operators in the static regime are sufficiently small. The bound on the rate of change of the gravitational strength in the Solar System constrains the coupling strength β to be smaller than 0.1. These two bounds impose tighter constraints than the results from the Cassini satellite and big bang nucleosynthesis. Despite the Solar System restrictions, we show that it is possible to construct viable models with interesting cosmological predictions. In particular, relative to ΛCDM, such models predict percent-level deviations for the clustering of matter and the number density of dark matter haloes. This makes these models predictive and testable by forthcoming observational missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a comprehensive derivation of linear perturbation equations for different matter species, including photons, baryons, cold dark matter, scalar fields, and massless and massive neutrinos in the presence of a generic conformal coupling. Starting from the Lagrangians, we show how the conformal transformation affects the dynamics. In particular, we discuss how to incorporate consistently the scalar coupling in the equations of the Boltzmann hierarchy for massive neutrinos and the subsequent fluid approximations. We use the recently proposed K-mouflage model as an example to demonstrate the numerical implementation of our linear perturbation equations. K-mouflage is a new mechanism to suppress the fifth force between matter particles induced by the scalar coupling, but in the linear regime the fifth force is unsuppressed and can change the clustering of different matter species in different ways. We show how the cosmic microwave background, lensing potential and matter power spectra are affected by the fifth force and find ranges of K-mouflage parameters whose effects could be seen observationally. We also find that the scalar coupling can have the nontrivial effect of shifting the amplitude of the power spectra of the lensing potential and density fluctuations in opposite directions, although both probe the overall clustering of matter. This paper can serve as a reference for those who work on generic coupled scalar field cosmology or those who are interested in the cosmological behavior of the K-mouflage model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We perform a validation of estimates of the growth rate of structure, described by the parameter combination fσ8, in modified gravity cosmologies. We consider an analysis pipeline based on the redshift-space distortion modeling of the clustering wedges statistic of the galaxy correlation function and apply it to mock catalogues of Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) and the normal branch of Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) cosmologies. We employ a halo occupation distribution approach to construct our mocks, which we ensure resemble the CMASS sample from Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) in terms of the total galaxy number density and large-scale amplitude of the power spectrum monopole. We show that the clustering wedges model successfully recovers the true growth rate difference between DGP and ΛCDM, even for cases with over 40% enhancement in fσ8 compared to ΛCDM. The unbiased performance of the clustering wedges model allows us to use the growth rate values estimated from the BOSS DR12 data to constrain the crossover scale rc of DGP gravity to [rcH0]-1<0.97 (2σ) or rc>3090 Mpc/h, cutting into the interesting region of parameter space with rc ~H-10 using constraints from the growth of structure alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that, in the presence of massive neutrinos, the Galileon gravity model provides a very good fit to the current cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature, CMB lensing and baryonic acoustic oscillation data. This model, which we dub νGalileon, when assuming its stable attractor background solution, contains the same set of free parameters as lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM), although it leads to different expansion dynamics and nontrivial gravitational interactions. The data provide compelling evidence (≳6σ) for nonzero neutrino masses, with σmν≳0.4 eV at the 2σ level. Upcoming precision terrestrial measurements of the absolute neutrino mass scale therefore have the potential to test this model. We show that CMB lensing measurements at multipoles l≲40 will be able to discriminate between the νGalileon and ΛCDM models. Unlike ΛCDM, the νGalileon model is consistent with local determinations of the Hubble parameter. The presence of massive neutrinos lowers the value of σ8 substantially, despite of the enhanced gravitational strength on large scales. Unlike ΛCDM, the νGalileon model predicts a negative ISW effect, which is difficult to reconcile with current observational limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]