Constraints on f(R) gravity from probing the large-scale structure

Abstract

We study cosmological constraints on metric f(R) gravity models that are designed to reproduce the ΛCDM expansion history with modifications to gravity described by a supplementary cosmological freedom, the Compton wavelength parameter B 0. We conduct a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis on the parameter space, utilizing the geometrical constraints from supernovae distances, the baryon acoustic oscillation distances, and the Hubble constant, along with all of the cosmic microwave background data, including the largest scales, its correlation with galaxies, and a probe of the relation between weak gravitational lensing and galaxy flows. The strongest constraints, however, are obtained through the inclusion of data from cluster abundance. Using all of the data, we infer a bound of B 0<1.1×10 -3 at the 95% C.L. © 2012 American Physical Society.