Title: Cosmological constraints on Lorentz violating dark energy

Abstract

The role of Lorentz invariance as a fundamental symmetry of nature has been lately reconsidered in different approaches to quantum gravity. It is thus natural to study whether other puzzles of physics may be solved within these proposals. This may be the case for the cosmological constant problem. Indeed, it has been shown that breaking Lorentz invariance provides Lagrangians that can drive the current acceleration of the universe without experiencing large corrections from ultraviolet physics. In this work, we focus on the simplest model of this type, called ΘCDM, and study its cosmological implications in detail. At the background level, this model cannot be distinguished from ΛCDM. The differences appear at the level of perturbations. We show that in ΘCDM, the spectrum of CMB anisotropies and matter fluctuations may be affected by a rescaling of the gravitational constant in the Poisson equation, by the presence of extra contributions to the anisotropic stress, and finally by the existence of extra clustering degrees of freedom. To explore these modifications accurately, we modify the Boltzmann code class. We then use the parameter inference code Monte Python to confront ΘCDM with data from WMAP-7, SPT and WiggleZ. We obtain strong bounds on the parametersmore » accounting for deviations from ΛCDM. In particular, we find that the discrepancy between the gravitational constants appearing in the Poisson and Friedmann equations is constrained at the level of 1.8%.« less

Authors:

Audren, B.; Lesgourgues, J. ^[1]; Blas, D. ^[2]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. FSB/ITP/LPPC, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015, Lausanne (Switzerland)
2. Theory Group, Physics Department, CERN, CH-1211 Geneva 23 (Switzerland)

Publication Date:

Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2013

OSTI Identifier:

22282731

Resource Type:

Journal Article

Journal Name:

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 2013; Journal Issue: 08; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); Journal ID: ISSN 1475-7516

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

79 ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY; ACCELERATION; ANISOTROPY; COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT; COSMOLOGY; DEGREES OF FREEDOM; FLUCTUATIONS; LAGRANGIAN FUNCTION; LIMITING VALUES; LORENTZ INVARIANCE; NONLUMINOUS MATTER; PERTURBATION THEORY; POISSON EQUATION; QUANTUM GRAVITY; ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION; UNIVERSE