English

Testing gravity on large scales by combining weak lensing with galaxy clustering using CFHTLenS and BOSS CMASS

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2016-12-13 v2

Abstract

We measure a combination of gravitational lensing, galaxy clustering, and redshift-space distortions called EGE_G. The quantity EGE_G probes both parts of metric potential and is insensitive to galaxy bias and σ8\sigma_8. These properties make it an attractive statistic to test Λ\LambdaCDM, General Relativity and its alternate theories. We have combined CMASS DR11 with CFHTLenS and recent measurements of β\beta from RSD analysis, and find EG(z=0.57)=0.42±0.056E_G(z = 0.57) = 0.42 \pm 0.056, an 13\% measurement in agreement with the prediction of general relativity EG(z=0.57)=0.396±0.011E_G(z = 0.57) = 0.396 \pm 0.011 using the Planck 2015 cosmological parameters. We have corrected our measurement for various observational and theoretical systematics. Our measurement is consistent with the first measurement of EGE_G using CMB lensing in place of galaxy lensing (Pullen et. al. 2015a) at small scales, but shows 2.8σ\sigma tension when compared with their final results including large scales. This analysis with future surveys will provide improved statistical error and better control over systematics to test General Relativity and its alternate theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.09410,
  title  = {Testing gravity on large scales by combining weak lensing with galaxy clustering using CFHTLenS and BOSS CMASS},
  author = {Shadab Alam and Hironao Miyatake and Surhud More and Shirley Ho and Rachel Mandelbaum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.09410},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

published in MNRAS (http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/11/23/mnras.stw3056), matches published version, 13 pages, 9 figures