Nonlinear structure formation in the Cubic Galileon gravity model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nonlinear growth of large-scale structures in the Cubic Galileon gravity model using N-body simulations, revealing modest enhancements in clustering and halo formation due to the Vainshtein screening mechanism.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed N-body simulation analysis of the Cubic Galileon model, including the Vainshtein screening, and compares its predictions with observational data.

Findings

Matter power spectrum increases by ~25% compared to ΛCDM.

Vainshtein screening limits the fifth force's impact on nonlinear scales.

Model matches small-scale CMB data but shows tension with ISW effect.

Abstract

We model the linear and nonlinear growth of large scale structure in the Cubic Galileon gravity model, by running a suite of N-body cosmological simulations using the {\tt ECOSMOG} code. Our simulations include the Vainshtein screening effect, which reconciles the Cubic Galileon model with local tests of gravity. In the linear regime, the amplitude of the matter power spectrum increases by $\sim 25%$ with respect to the standard $\Lambda$CDM model today. The modified expansion rate accounts for $\sim 20%$ of this enhancement, while the fifth force is responsible for only $\sim 5%$. This is because the effective unscreened gravitational strength deviates from standard gravity only at late times, even though it can be twice as large today. In the nonlinear regime ($k \gtrsim 0.1 h\rm{Mpc}^{-1}$), the fifth force leads to only a modest increase ($\lesssim 8%$) in the clustering power on all scales due to the very efficient operation of the Vainshtein mechanism. Such a strong effect is typically not seen in other models with the same screening mechanism. The screening also results in the fifth force increasing the number density of halos by less than 10%, on all mass scales. Our results show that the screening does not ruin the validity of linear theory on large scales which anticipates very strong constraints from galaxy clustering data. We also show that, whilst the model gives an excellent match to CMB data on small angular scales ($l \gtrsim 50$), the predicted integrated Sachs-Wolf effect is in tension with Planck/WMAP results.