Testing modified gravity theories with marked statistics

TL;DR

This paper develops theoretical templates for marked statistics that emphasize low-density regions to test modified gravity theories, validated through N-body simulations, offering a new approach for future galaxy survey analyses.

Contribution

It introduces a method to construct and validate theoretical templates for marked statistics targeting low-density regions to test modified gravity models.

Findings

Templates accurately match simulation data

Marked statistics enhance sensitivity to MG effects

Validated approach for future galaxy surveys

Abstract

In the last two decades, Modified Gravity (MG) models have been proposed to explain the accelerated expansion of the Universe. However, one of the main difficulties these theories face is that they must reduce to General Relativity (GR) at sufficiently high energy densities, such as those found in the solar system. To achieve this, MG theories typically employ so-called screening mechanisms: nonlinear effects that bring them to GR at the appropriate limits. For this reason, low-energy regions where the screenings do not operate efficiently, such as cosmic voids, are identified as ideal laboratories for testing GR. Hence, the use of marked statistics that up-weight low energy densities have been proposed for being implemented with data from future galaxy surveys. In this proceeding note, we show how to construct theoretical templates for such statistics and test their accuracy with the use of N-body simulations.