Can galaxy clusters, type Ia supernovae and cosmic microwave background rule out a class of modified gravity theories?

TL;DR

This study investigates how modified gravity theories affecting electromagnetic interactions can be constrained using galaxy clusters, supernovae, and CMB data, finding no evidence for deviations from standard physics.

Contribution

It provides the first joint analysis of multiple cosmological probes to test a class of modified gravity theories involving scalar-electromagnetic couplings.

Findings

No violation of standard cosmological relations detected.

Tight constraints placed on variations of fundamental constants.

Supports the validity of the standard cosmological model.

Abstract

In this paper we study cosmological signatures of modified gravity theories that can be written as a coupling between a extra scalar field and the electromagnetic part of the usual Lagrangian for the matter fields. In these frameworks all the electromagnetic sector of the theory is affected and variations of fundamental constants, of the cosmic distance duality relation and of the evolution law of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) are expected and are related each other. In order to search these variations we perform jointly analyses with angular diameter distances of galaxy clusters, luminosity distances of type Ia supernovae and $T_{CMB}(z)$ measurements. We obtain tight constraints with no indication of violation of the standard framework.