Misinterpreting Modified Gravity as Dark Energy: a Quantitative Study

TL;DR

This study explores how modified gravity models can be misinterpreted as dark energy within standard cosmological analyses, revealing specific biases in inferred parameters and implications for measurements like $S_8$.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative mapping of how modified gravity models appear when analyzed under standard dark energy assumptions.

Findings

Modified gravity models can mimic dark energy in standard analyses.

Specific biases in parameters like $w_0$, $w_a$, and $S_8$ are identified.

Implications for future cosmological surveys are discussed.

Abstract

Standard cosmological data analyses typically constrain simple phenomenological dark-energy parameters, for example the present-day value of the equation of state parameter, $w_0$, and its variation with scale factor, $w_a$. However, results from such an analysis cannot easily indicate the presence of modified gravity. Even if general relativity does not hold, experimental data could still be fit sufficiently well by a phenomenological $w_0w_a$CDM, unmodified-gravity model. Hence, it would be very useful to know if there are generic signatures of modified gravity in standard analyses. Here we present, for the first time to our knowledge, a quantitative mapping showing how modified gravity models look when (mis)interpreted within the standard unmodified-gravity analysis. Scanning through a broad space of modified-gravity (Horndeski) models, and assuming a near-future survey consisting of CMB, BAO, and SNIa observations, we report values of the best-fit set of cosmological parameters including $(w_0, w_a)$ that would be inferred if modified gravity were at work. We find that modified gravity models that can masquerade as standard gravity lead to very specific biases in standard-parameter spaces. We also comment on implications for measurements of the amplitude of mass fluctuations described by the parameter $S_8$.