Université de GenèveDépartement de Physique ThéoriqueCAP Genève

Probing Graviton mass using weak lensing and SZ effect in Galaxy Clusters

Date: 
15. June 2018 - 11:30
Speaker: 
Akshay Rana (University of Delhi)
In General Relativity (GR), the graviton is massless. However, a common feature in several theoretical alter- natives of GR is a non-zero mass for the graviton. These theories can be described as massive gravity theories. Despite many theoretical complexities in these theories, on phenomenological grounds the implications of massive gravity have been widely used to put bounds on graviton mass. One of the generic implications of giving a mass to the graviton is that the gravitational potential will follow a Yukawa-like fall off. The use of this feature of massive gravity theories to probe the mass of graviton by using the largest gravitationally bound objects, namely galaxy clusters would be discussed. Further, an analysis would be shown where we use the mass estimates of galaxy clusters measured at various cosmologically defined radial distances measured via weak lensing (WL) and Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect. We also uses the model independent values of Hubble parameter H(z) smoothed by a non-parametric method, Gaussian process. This analysis improves the upper bound on graviton mass obtained earlier from galaxy clusters.

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Département de Physique Théorique
Université de Genève
24, quai Ernest Ansermet
1211 Genève 4
Switzerland
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