Tufts/CfA/MIT Cosmology Seminar, at MIT:

Tuesday, November 28, 2006
2:30 pm
Center for Theoretical Physics Seminar Room
Building NE25, Fourth Floor
Refreshments at 2:00, same location

"Dark Energy or Modified Gravity?"


Edmund Bertschinger
MIT

Abstract:

Measurement of the spatially-averaged cosmic expansion history cannot -- even in principle -- distinguish dark energy from a modification of general relativity at low energy scales. The only way to test and constrain modified gravity theories is to examine spatial inhomogeneities. This talk will present a cosmological extension of the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) formulation of modified gravity theories. The evolution of long-wavelength curvature perturbations of a flat Robertson-Walker spacetime is almost completely determined by the expansion history, regardless of the form of modified gravity. Only one degree of freedom -- corresponding to the PPN $\gamma$ parameter -- is unconstrained. This parameter can be measured on Gpc scales using CMB anisotropy.

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