Testing General Relativity on cosmological scales at redshift z ∼ 1.5 with quasar and CMB lensing

Zhang, Yucheng; Pullen, Anthony R; Alam, Shadab; Singh, Sukhdeep; Burtin, Etienne; Chuang, Chia-Hsun; Hou, Jiamin; Lyke, Brad W; Myers, Adam D; Neveux, Richard; Ross, Ashley J; Rossi, Graziano; Zhao, Cheng

doi:10.1093/mnras/staa3672

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Journal article

Testing General Relativity on cosmological scales at redshift z ∼ 1.5 with quasar and CMB lensing

Zhang, Yucheng ORCID Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, 726 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, USA
Pullen, Anthony R Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY 10010, USA
Alam, Shadab Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, EH9 3HJ, UK
Singh, Sukhdeep Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Burtin, Etienne IRFU,CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Chuang, Chia-Hsun Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, 452 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Hou, Jiamin Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Postfach 1312, Giessenbachstrasse 1, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
Lyke, Brad W University of Wyoming, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, WY 82071, USA
Myers, Adam D University of Wyoming, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, WY 82071, USA
Neveux, Richard IRFU,CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Ross, Ashley J ORCID Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Rossi, Graziano Department of Physics and Astronomy, Sejong University, Seoul, 143-747, Korea
Zhao, Cheng ORCID Institute of Physics, Laboratory of Astrophysics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Observatoire de Sauverny, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland

2020-11-25

Published in:

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - Oxford University Press (OUP). - 2020

English Abstract
We test general relativity (GR) at the effective redshift $\bar{z} \sim 1.5$ by estimating the statistic EG, a probe of gravity, on cosmological scales 19 − 190 h−1Mpc. This is the highest-redshift and largest-scale estimation of EG so far. We use the quasar sample with redshifts 0.8 < z < 2.2 from Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) Data Release 16 (DR16) as the large-scale structure (LSS) tracer, for which the angular power spectrum $C_\ell ^{qq}$ and the redshift-space distortion (RSD) parameter β are estimated. By cross correlating with the Planck 2018 cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing map, we detect the angular cross-power spectrum $C_\ell ^{\kappa q}$ signal at 12 σ significance. Both jackknife resampling and simulations are used to estimate the covariance matrix (CM) of EG at 5 bins covering different scales, with the later preferred for its better constraints on the covariances. We find EG estimates agree with the GR prediction at 1 σ level over all these scales. With the CM estimated with 300 simulations, we report a best-fit scale-averaged estimate of $E_G(\bar{z})=0.30\pm 0.05$, which is in line with the GR prediction $E_G^{\rm GR}(\bar{z})=0.33$ with Planck 2018 CMB+BAO matter density fraction Ωm = 0.31. The statistical errors of EG with future LSS surveys at similar redshifts will be reduced by an order of magnitude, which makes it possible to constrain modified gravity models.

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