Expansion and Growth of Structure Observables in a Macroscopic Gravity Averaged Universe

TL;DR

This paper explores how averaging inhomogeneities affects cosmic expansion and structure growth observables within a covariant Macroscopic Gravity framework, deriving solutions and comparing them with current data to assess their impact on cosmological parameters.

Contribution

It derives an anisotropic exact solution in Macroscopic Gravity for flat FLRW universes and analyzes the influence of averaging effects on expansion history and structure growth.

Findings

Averaging parameter $oldsymbol{ ext{Ω}_A}$ constrained to -0.05 to 0.07 at 95% CL.

Inclusion of $ ext{Ω}_A$ shifts cosmological parameters by a few percent.

Growth rate deviations up to 2-4% compared to LCDM.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of averaging inhomogeneities on expansion and large-scale structure growth observables using the exact and covariant framework of Macroscopic Gravity (MG). It is well-known that applying the Einstein's equations and spatial averaging do not commute and lead to the averaging problem. For the MG formalism applied to the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric, this gives an extra dynamical term encapsulated as an averaging density parameter denoted $\Omega_A$. An exact isotropic cosmological solution of MG for the flat FLRW metric is already known in the literature, we derive here an anisotropic exact solution. Using the isotropic solution, we compare the expansion history to current data of distances to supernovae, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, CMB last scattering surface, and Hubble constant measurements, and find $-0.05 \le \Omega_A \le 0.07$ (at the 95% CL). For the flat metric case this reduces to $-0.03 \le \Omega_A \le 0.05$. We also find that the inclusion of this term in the fits can shift the values of the usual cosmological parameters by a few to several percents. Next, we derive an equation for the growth rate of large scale structure in MG that includes a term due to the averaging and compare it to that of the LCDM concordance model. We find that an $\Omega_A$ of an amplitude range within the bounds above leads to a relative deviation of the growth from that of the LCDM of up to 2-4% at late times. Thus, the shift in the growth could be of comparable amplitude to that caused by similar changes in cosmological parameters like the dark energy density parameter or its equation of state. The effect could also be comparable in amplitude to some systematic effects considered for future surveys. This indicates that the averaging term and its possible effect need to be tightly constrained in future precision cosmological studies. (Abridged)