English

A field-level reaction for screened modified gravity

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-09-22 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We present a field-level reaction framework to emulate the nonlinear effects of screened modified gravity on the cosmic web. This approach is designed to enable field-level inference with data from Stage IV cosmological surveys. Building on the reaction method, which models the nonlinear matter power spectrum in modified gravity as corrections to a "pseudo" Λ\LambdaCDM cosmology, we extend the method to full field-level predictions by applying it to the output of NN-body simulations, including both positions and velocities. We focus on modifications to gravity that are scale-independent at the linear level, allowing us to isolate and emulate nonlinear deviations, particularly screening effects. Our neural network predicts the field-level correction ("reaction") to a pseudoΛ\LambdaCDM simulation whose linear clustering matches that of the target. The emulator achieves sub-percent accuracy across a broad range of summary statistics, including 0.4\% agreement in the matter power spectrum at scales k<1k < 1 Mpc/h/h, and 2\% accuracy in redshift-space distortion multipoles at k<0.3k < 0.3 Mpc/h/h. We also validate the emulator against NN-body simulations with increased force resolution and time steps, confirming the robustness of its performance. These results demonstrate that our framework is a practical and reliable tool for incorporating screened modified gravity models into field-level cosmological inference, enabling stringent tests of extra fundamental forces at cosmological scales.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.18876,
  title  = {A field-level reaction for screened modified gravity},
  author = {Daniela Saadeh and Kazuya Koyama and Xan Morice-Atkinson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.18876},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

13 pages, 9 figures, accepted in MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:29:54.779Z