Pavel Kroupa, Prague)

The spatial arrangement of galaxies (of satellites on a scale of 100kpc) as well as their three-dimensional distribution in galaxy groups such as the Local Group (on a scale of 1Mpc), the distribution of galaxies in the nearby volume of galaxies (on a scale of 8Mpc) and in the nearby Universe (on a scale of 1Gpc) is considered. There is further evidence that the CMB shows irregularities and for anisotropic cosmic expansion. The overall impression one obtains, given the best data we have, is matter to be arranged as not expected in the dark-matter based standard model of cosmology (SMoC). There appears to be too much structure, regularity and organisation. Dynamical friction on the dark matter halos is a strong direct test for the presence of dark matter particles, but this process does not appear to be operative in the real Universe. This evidence suggests strongly that dynamically relevant dark matter does not exist and therefore cosmology remains largely not understood theoretically. More-accepted awareness of this case would by itself constitute a major advance in research providing fabulous opportunities for bright minds, and the observational data strongly suggest that gravitation must be effectively Milgromian, corresponding to a generalized Poisson equation in the classical limit. Thus, physical cosmology offers a significant historically relevant opportunity for ground-breaking work, at least for those daring to do so.

Iarley P. Lobo, Niccoló Loret, Francisco Nettel

"Rainbow" metrics are a widely used approach to metric formalism for theories with Modified Dispersion Relations. They have had a huge success in the Quantum Gravity Phenomenology literature, since they allow to introduce momentum-dependent spacetime metrics into the description of systems with Modified Dispersion Relation. This approach, however, presents some compatibility issues with a relativistic description, even in the case of introducing deformed spacetime symmetries to keep the theory's modified dispersion relation invariant. In this paper we would like to introduce the readers to this issue and to describe how the relativistic properties of the theory can be recovered taking into account a more complex (but also complete) momentum-space curvature framework. We also introduce a new metric structure from a Polyakov-like description of the action.

Paolo Creminelli, David Pirtskhalava, Luca Santoni, Enrico Trincherini

We study the stability of spatially flat FRW solutions which are geodesically complete, i.e. for which one can follow null (graviton) geodesics both in the past and in the future without ever encountering singularities. This is the case of NEC-violating cosmologies such as smooth bounces or solutions which approach Minkowski in the past. We study the EFT of linear perturbations around a solution of this kind, including the possibility of multiple fields and fluids. One generally faces a gradient instability which can be avoided only if the operator $~^{(3)}{R} \delta N~$ is present and its coefficient changes sign along the evolution. This operator (typical of beyond-Horndeski theories) does not lead to extra degrees of freedom, but cannot arise starting from any theory with second-order equations of motion. The change of sign of this operator prevents to set it to zero with a generalised disformal transformation.

Eloisa Bentivegna

The applications of numerical relativity to cosmology are on the rise, contributing insight into such cosmological problems as structure formation, primordial phase transitions, gravitational-wave generation, and inflation. In this paper, I present the infrastructure for the computation of inhomogeneous dust cosmologies which was used recently to measure the effect of nonlinear inhomogeneity on the cosmic expansion rate. I illustrate the code's architecture, provide evidence for its correctness in a number of familiar cosmological settings, and evaluate its parallel performance for grids of up to several billion points. The code, which is available as free software, is based on the Einstein Toolkit infrastructure, and in particular leverages the automated-code-generation capabilities provided by its component Kranc.

A. Emir Gumrukcuoglu, Kazuya Koyama, Shinji Mukohyama

The extended quasidilaton theory is one of the simplest Lorentz-invariant massive gravity theories which can accommodate a stable self-accelerating vacuum solution. In this paper we revisit this theory and study the effect of matter fields. For a matter sector that couples minimally to the physical metric, we find hints of a Jeans type instability in the IR. In the analogue k-essence field set-up, this instability manifests itself as an IR ghost for the scalar field perturbation, but this can be interpreted as a classical instability that becomes relevant below some momentum scale in terms of matter density perturbations. We also consider the effect of the background evolution influenced by matter on the stability of the gravity sector perturbations. In particular, we address the previous claims of ghost instability in the IR around the late time attractor. We show that, although the matter-induced modification of the evolution potentially brings tension to the stability conditions, one goes beyond the regime of validity of the effective theory well before the solutions become unstable. We also draw attention to the fact that the IR stability conditions are also enforced by the existence requirements of consistent background solutions.

Katelin Schutz, Adrian Liu

The recent discovery of gravitational waves from merging black holes has generated interest in primordial black holes as a possible component of the dark matter. In this paper, we show that pulsar timing may soon have sufficient data to constrain $1$-$1000\,M_{\odot}$ primordial black holes via the non-detection of a third-order Shapiro time delay as the black holes move around the Galactic halo. We present the results of a Monte Carlo simulation which suggests that future data from known pulsars may be capable of constraining the PBH density more stringently than other existing methods in the mass range ~1-30$\,M_{\odot}$. We find that timing new pulsars discovered using the proposed Square Kilometre Array may constrain primordial black holes in this mass range to comprise less than ~1-10% of the dark matter.

Shahab Joudaki, Alexander Mead, Chris Blake, Ami Choi, Jelte de Jong, Thomas Erben, Catherine Heymans, Hendrik Hildebrandt, Henk Hoekstra, Benjamin Joachimi, Dominik Klaes, Fabian Köhlinger, Konrad Kuijken, John McFarland, Lance Miller, Peter Schneider, Massimo Viola

We test extensions to the standard cosmological model with weak gravitational lensing tomography using 450 deg$^2$ of imaging data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS). In these extended cosmologies, which include massive neutrinos, nonzero curvature, evolving dark energy, modified gravity, and running of the scalar spectral index, we also examine the discordance between KiDS and cosmic microwave background measurements from Planck. The discordance between the two datasets is largely unaffected by a more conservative treatment of the lensing systematics and the removal of angular scales most sensitive to nonlinear physics. The only extended cosmology that simultaneously alleviates the discordance with Planck and is at least moderately favored by the data includes evolving dark energy with a time-dependent equation of state (in the form of the $w_0-w_a$ parameterization). In this model, the respective $S_8 = \sigma_8 \sqrt{\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3}$ constraints agree at the $1\sigma$ level, and there is `substantial concordance' between the KiDS and Planck datasets when accounting for the full parameter space. Moreover, the Planck constraint on the Hubble constant is wider than in LCDM and in agreement with the Riess et al. (2016) direct measurement of $H_0$. The dark energy model is moderately favored as compared to LCDM when combining the KiDS and Planck measurements, and remains moderately favored after including an informative prior on the Hubble constant. In both of these scenarios, the dark energy parameters are discrepant with a cosmological constant at the $3\sigma$ level. Moreover, KiDS constrains the sum of neutrino masses to 4.0 eV (95% CL), finds no preference for time or scale dependent modifications to the metric potentials, and is consistent with flatness and no running of the spectral index. The analysis code is publicly available at https://github.com/sjoudaki/kids450

Obinna Umeh, Sheean Jolicoeur, Roy Maartens, Chris Clarkson

Next-generation galaxy surveys will increasingly rely on the galaxy bispectrum to improve cosmological constraints, especially on primordial non-Gaussianity. A key theoretical requirement that remains to be developed is the analysis of general relativistic effects on the bispectrum, which arise from observing galaxies on the past lightcone. Here we compute for the first time all the local relativistic corrections to the bispectrum, from Doppler, gravitational potential and higher-order effects. For the galaxy bispectrum, the problem is much more complex than for the power spectrum, since we need the lightcone corrections at second order. Mode-coupling contributions at second order mean that relativistic corrections can be non-negligible at smaller scales than in the case of the power spectrum. In a primordial Gaussian universe, we show that the relativistic bispectrum for a moderately squeezed shape can differ from the Newtonian prediction by $\sim 30\%$ when the short modes are at the equality scale. For the equilateral shape, the difference is $\sim 20\%$ at gigaparsec scales. The relativistic corrections, if ignored in the analysis of observations, could therefore easily be mistaken for primordial non-Gaussianity. We conclude that for upcoming surveys which probe equality scales and beyond, these new relativistic signatures must be included for an accurate measurement of primordial non-Gaussianity.