Cosmological tests of modified gravity: constraints on $F(R)$ theories from the galaxy clustering ratio
Abstract
The clustering ratio $\eta$, a large-scale structure observable originally devised to constrain the shape of the power spectrum of matter density fluctuations, is shown to provide a sensitive and model independent probe of the nature of gravity in the cosmological regime. We apply this analysis to $F(R)$ theories of gravity using the luminous red galaxy sample extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find that the absolute amplitude of deviations from GR, $f_{R_0 }$, is constrained to be smaller than $3 \times 10^{-6}$ at the 1$\sigma$ confidence level. This bound, improving by an order of magnitude on current constraints, makes cosmological probes of gravity competitive with Solar system tests.