Constraints on f (R) gravity from thermal-Sunyaev-Zel'dovich-effect-selected SPT galaxy clusters and weak lensing mass calibration from des and HST

Vogt, S.M.L. and Bocquet, S. and Davies, C.T. and Mohr, J.J. and Schmidt, F. and Ruan, C.-Z. and Li, B. and Hernández-Aguayo, C. and Grandis, S. and Bleem, L.E. and Klein, M. and Schrabback, T. and Aguena, M. and Brooks, D. and Burke, D.L. and Campos, A. and Carnero Rosell, A. and Carretero, J. and Costanzi, M. and Da Costa, L.N. and Pereira, M.E.S. and De Vicente, J. and Doel, P. and Everett, S. and Ferrero, I. and Frieman, J. and García-Bellido, J. and Gatti, M. and Giannini, G. and Gruen, D. and Gruendl, R.A. and Hinton, S.R. and Hollowood, D.L. and Lee, S. and Lima, M. and Marshall, J.L. and Mena-Fernández, J. and Miquel, R. and Myles, J. and Paterno, M. and Pieres, A. and Plazas Malagón, A.A. and Reichardt, C.L. and Romer, A.K. and Samuroff, S. and Sarkar, A. and Sanchez, E. and Sevilla-Noarbe, I. and Smith, M. and Suchyta, E. and Swanson, M.E.C. and Tarle, G. and Vikram, V. and Weaverdyck, N. and Weller, J. (2025) Constraints on f (R) gravity from thermal-Sunyaev-Zel'dovich-effect-selected SPT galaxy clusters and weak lensing mass calibration from des and HST. Physical Review D, 111 (4): 043519. ISSN 1550-7998

Abstract

We present constraints on the ⁡() gravity model using a sample of 1005 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.25–1.78 that have been selected through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect from South Pole Telescope data and subjected to optical and near-infrared confirmation with the multicomponent matched filter algorithm. We employ weak gravitational lensing mass calibration from the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 data for 688 clusters at <0.95 and from the Hubble Space Telescope for 39 clusters with 0.6 < <1.7. Our cluster sample is a powerful probe of ⁡() gravity, because this model predicts a scale-dependent enhancement in the growth of structure, which impacts the halo mass function (HMF) at cluster mass scales. To account for these modified gravity effects on the HMF, our analysis employs a semianalytical approach calibrated with numerical simulations. Combining calibrated cluster counts with primary cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization anisotropy measurements from the Planck 2018 release, we derive robust constraints on the ⁡() parameter ⁢0. Our results, log10⁡|⁢0| <−5.32 at the 95% credible level, are the tightest current constraints on ⁡() gravity from cosmological scales. This upper limit rules out ⁡()-like deviations from general relativity that result in more than a ∼20% enhancement of the cluster population on mass scales 200⁢c>3×1014⁢⊙.