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Testing Gravity Using Cosmic Voids

November 20, 2014

Testing Gravity Using Cosmic Voids

Paul Zivick

Astrophysicists have long searched for ways to find cracks in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and thanks to OSU undergraduate Paul Zivick, his advisor Paul Sutter, and an international team of researchers, they have a new avenue available to them.

 
In a paper recently submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Zivick and collaborators outlined how the properties of cosmic voids - the large, empty regions that fill up most of the universe - can provide constraints on modified gravity theories. These theories must agree with predictions from General Relativity in high-density environments in order to pass stringent tests, but in low-density regions like voids the differences between the theories are much larger.
 
Zivick's work predicted that upcoming galaxy surveys will be able to distinguish modified gravity models better with voids than with traditional probes.
 
The rest of the article can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.5694