Claudia de Rham, J. Tate Deskins, Andrew J. Tolley, Shuang-Yong Zhou

Recently, aLIGO has announced the first direct detections of gravitational waves, a direct manifestation of the propagating degrees of freedom of gravity. The detected signals GW150914 and GW151226 have been used to examine the basic properties of these gravitational degrees of freedom, particularly setting an upper bound on their mass. It is timely to review what the mass of these gravitational degrees of freedom means from the theoretical point of view, particularly taking into account the recent developments in constructing consistent massive gravity theories. Apart from the GW150914 mass bound, a few other observational bounds have been established from the effects of the Yukawa potential, modified dispersion relation and fifth force that are all induced when the fundamental gravitational degrees of freedom are massive. We review these different mass bounds and examine how they stand in the wake of recent theoretical developments and how they compare to the bound from GW150914.

Peter Adshead, John T. Giblin Jr., Timothy R. Scully, Evangelos I. Sfakianakis

In this work we compute the production of magnetic fields in models of axion inflation coupled to the hypercharge sector of the Standard Model through a Chern-Simons interaction term. We make the simplest choice of a quadratic inflationary potential and use lattice simulations to calculate the magnetic field strength, helicity and correlation length at the end of inflation. For small values of the axion-gauge field coupling strength the results agree with no-backreaction calculations and estimates found in the literature. For larger couplings the helicity of the magnetic field differs from the no-backreaction estimate and depends strongly on the comoving wavenumber. We estimate the post-inflationary evolution of the magnetic field based on known results for the evolution of helical and non-helical magnetic fields. The magnetic fields produced by axion inflation with large couplings to $U(1)_Y$ can reach $B_{\rm eff} \gtrsim 10^{-16}\, G$. This result is insensitive to the exact value of the coupling, as long as the coupling is large enough to allow for instantaneous preheating. Depending on the assumptions for the physical processes that determine blazar properties, these fields can be found consistent with blazar observations. Finally, the intensity of the magnetic field for large coupling can be enough to satisfy the requirements for a recently proposed baryogenesis mechanism, which utilizes the chiral anomaly of the Standard Model.

Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt

One of the fundamental questions of theoretical cosmology is whether the universe can undergo a non-singular bounce, i.e., smoothly transit from a period of contraction to a period of expansion through violation of the null energy condition (NEC) at energies well below the Planck scale and at finite values of the scale factor such that the entire evolution remains classical. A common claim has been that a non-singular bounce either leads to ghost or gradient instabilities or a cosmological singularity. In this letter, we examine cubic Galileon theories and present a procedure for explicitly constructing examples of a non-singular cosmological bounce without encountering any pathologies and maintaining a sub-luminal sound speed for co-moving curvature modes throughout the NEC violating phase. We also discuss the relation between our procedure and earlier work.

N.S Israel, J.W Moffat

A major hurdle for modified gravity theories is to explain the dynamics of galaxy clusters. This paper makes the case for a generalized gravitational theory called Scalar-Tensor-Vector-Gravity (STVG) to explain merging cluster dynamics, and it will be the first of a series of papers intended to investigate this issue. The paper presents the results of a re-analysis of the Bullet Cluster as well as an analysis of the Train Wreck Cluster (using data from Jee et al. and Harvey et al.) in the weak gravitational field limit without dark matter. The King-$\beta$ model is used to fit the X-ray data of both clusters, and the $\kappa$-maps are computed using the parameters of this fit. The amount of galaxies in the clusters is estimated by subtracting the predicted $\kappa$-map from the $\kappa$-map data. The estimate suggests that $3.2\%$ of the Bullet Cluster is composed of galaxies. For the Train Wreck Cluster, if the Jee et al. data is used, it is found that $3.5\%$ of it is galaxies, and $22\%$ if the Harvey et al. data is used. The matter in galaxies and the enhanced gravity shift the lensing peaks making the peaks offset from the X-ray gas. The work demonstrates that this generalized gravitational theory has the potential to explain merging cluster dynamics without dark matter.

Jaiyul Yoo, Fulvio Scaccabarozzi

Comparing the luminosity distance measurements to its theoretical predictions is one of the cornerstones in establishing the modern cosmology. However, as shown in Biern & Yoo, its theoretical predictions in literature are often plagued with infrared divergences and gauge-dependences. This trend calls into question the sanity of the methods used to derive the luminosity distance. Here we critically investigate four different methods --- the geometric approach, the Sachs approach, the Jacobi mapping approach, and the geodesic light cone (GLC) approach to modeling the luminosity distance, and we present a unified treatment of such methods, facilitating the comparison among the methods and checking their sanity. All of these four methods, if exercised properly, can be used to reproduce the correct description of the luminosity distance.

Sukhdeep Singh, Rachel Mandelbaum, Joel R. Brownstein

We present first results from cross-correlating Planck CMB lensing maps with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) galaxy lensing shape catalog and BOSS galaxy catalogs. For galaxy position vs. CMB lensing cross-correlations, we measure the convergence signal around the galaxies in configuration space, using the BOSS LOWZ ($z\sim0.30$) and CMASS ($z\sim0.57$) samples. With fixed Planck 2015 cosmology, doing a joint fit with the galaxy clustering measurement, for the LOWZ (CMASS) sample we find a galaxy bias $b_g=1.75\pm0.04$ ($1.95\pm 0.02$) and galaxy-matter cross-correlation coefficient $r_{cc}=1.0\pm0.2$ ($0.8\pm 0.1$) using $20<r_p<70$ Mpc/h, consistent with results from galaxy-galaxy lensing. Using the same scales and including the galaxy-galaxy lensing measurements, we constrain $\Omega_m=0.284\pm0.024$ and relative calibration bias between the CMB lensing and galaxy lensing to be $b_\gamma=0.82^{+0.15}_{-0.14}$. The combination of galaxy lensing and CMB lensing also allows us to measure the cosmological distance ratios (with $z_l\sim0.3$, $z_s\sim0.5$) $\mathcal R=\frac{D_s D_{l,*}}{D_* D_{l,s}}=2.68\pm0.29$, consistent with predictions from the Planck 2015 cosmology ($\mathcal R=2.35$). We detect the galaxy position-CMB convergence cross-correlation at small scales, $r_p<1$ Mpc/h, and find consistency with lensing by NFW halos of mass $M_h\sim10^{13}$$h^{-1}M_{\odot}$. Finally, we measure the CMB lensing-galaxy shear cross-correlation, finding an amplitude of $A=0.76\pm0.23$ ($z_\text{eff}=0.35$, $\theta<2^\circ$) with respect to Planck 2015 $\Lambda$CDM predictions ($1\sigma$-level consistency). We do not find evidence for relative systematics between the CMB and SDSS galaxy lensing.

Masayuki Tanaka, Kenneth Wong, Anupreeta More, Arsha Dezuka, Eiichi Egami, Masamune Oguri, Sherry H. Suyu, Alessandro Sonnenfeld, Ryou Higuchi, Yutaka Komiyama, Satoshi Miyazaki, Masafusa Onoue, Shuri Oyamada, Yousuke Utsumi

We report the serendipitous discovery of HSC J142449-005322, a double source plane lens system in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. We dub the system Eye of Horus. The lens galaxy is a very massive early-type galaxy with stellar mass of ~7x10^11 Msun located at z_L=0.795. The system exhibits two arcs/rings with clearly different colors, including several knots. We have performed spectroscopic follow-up observations of the system with FIRE on Magellan. The outer ring is confirmed at z_S2=1.988 with multiple emission lines, while the inner arc and counterimage is confirmed at z_S1=1.302. This makes it the first double source plane system with spectroscopic redshifts of both sources. Interestingly, redshifts of two of the knots embedded in the outer ring are found to be offset by delta_z=0.002 from the other knots, suggesting that the outer ring consists of at least two distinct components in the source plane. We perform lens modeling with two independent codes and successfully reproduce the main features of the system. However, two of the lensed sources separated by ~0.7 arcsec cannot be reproduced by a smooth potential, and the addition of substructure to the lens potential is required to reproduce them. Higher-resolution imaging of the system will help decipher the origin of this lensing feature and potentially detect the substructure.