Measuring growth index in a universe with massive neutrinos: A revisit of the general relativity test with the latest observations

• Published in: Physics letters. B Vol. 779; pp. 473 - 478
• Main Authors: Zhao, Ming-Ming, Zhang, Jing-Fei, Zhang, Xin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 10.04.2018; Elsevier
• ISSN: 0370-2693; 1873-2445
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2018.02.042

We make a consistency test for the general relativity (GR) through measuring the growth index γ in a universe with massive (sterile/active) neutrinos. We employ the redshift space distortion measurements to do the analysis. To constrain other cosmological parameters, we also use other cosmological measurements, including the Planck 2015 cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization data, the baryon acoustic oscillation data, the type Ia supernova JLA data, the weak lensing galaxy shear data, and the Planck 2015 lensing data. In a universe with massive sterile neutrinos, we obtain γ=0.624−0.050+0.055, with the tension with the GR prediction γ=0.55 at the 1.48σ level, showing that the consideration of sterile neutrinos still cannot make the true measurement of γ be well consistent with the GR prediction. In a universe with massive active neutrinos, we obtain γ=0.663±0.045 for the normal hierarchy case, γ=0.661−0.050+0.044 for the degenerate hierarchy case, and γ=0.668−0.051+0.045 for the inverted hierarchy case, with the tensions with GR all at beyond the 2σ level. We find that the consideration of massive active neutrinos (no matter what mass hierarchy is considered) almost does not influence the measurement of the growth index γ.