Unraveling the nature of gravity through our clumpy universe

Abstract

We propose a new probe to test the nature of gravity at various redshifts through large-scale cosmological observations. We use our void catalog, extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS, DR10), to trace the distribution of matter along the lines of sight to SNe Ia that are selected from the Union II catalog. We study the relation between SNe Ia luminosities and convergence and also the peculiar velocities of the sources. We show that the effects, on SNe Ia luminosities, of convergence and of peculiar velocities predicted by the theory of general relativity and theories of modified gravities are different and hence provide a new probe of gravity at various redshifts. We show that the present sparse large-scale data does not allow us to determine any statistically-significant deviation from the theory of general relativity but future more comprehensive surveys should provide us with means for such an exploration.