Testing modified gravity using a marked correlation function

ARMIJO, JOAQUÍN; CAI, YAN-CHUAN; PADILLA, NELSON; LI, BAOJIU; PEACOCK, JOHN A.

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2018 vol. 478 p. 3627 - 3632

0035-8711

In theories of modified gravity with the chameleon screening mechanism, the strength of the fifth force depends on environment. This induces an environment dependence of structure formation, which differs from Λ-cold-dark-matter (ΛCDM). We show that these differences could be captured by the marked correlation function. With the galaxy correlation functions and number densities calibrated to match between f(R) and ΛCDM models in simulations, we show that the marked correlation functions by using either the local galaxy number density or halo mass as the marks encode extra information, which can be used to test these theories. We discuss possible applications of these statistics in observations.