Test of the Gravitational Force Law on Cosmological Scales Using the Kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect

Document Type

Journal Article

Role

Author

Published In

Physical Review Letters

Volume

136

Article Number

151002

Publication Date

4-15-2026

Abstract

The mean pairwise velocity of massive halos reflects the gravitational force law on cosmic scales. We combine cosmic microwave background intensity maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and a galaxy catalog from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to estimate the mean pairwise velocity using the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect. On scales from 30 to 230 megaparsecs, we constrain the gravitational acceleration between pairs of halos at separation π‘Ÿ to be π‘”βˆ1/π‘Ÿπ‘› with 𝑛=2.1Β±0.3, which is consistent with Newtonian gravity in an expanding spacetime (i.e., the standard Λ⁒CDM model). This constraint shows agreement with an inverse quadratic radial dependence over the large distances separating galaxy halos, as expected in standard cosmology. Upcoming surveys have the potential to rule out 𝑛 =1 at 10⁒𝜎 significance. Our results establish the kSZ effect as a powerful tool for testing gravity on cosmological scales.

Keywords

alternative gravity theories, astrophysical studies of gravity, cosmic microwave background, dark matter, experimental studies of gravity, large scale structure of the universe


Find in Tripod

Share

COinS