Possible Resolution of the Hubble Tension with Weyl Invariant Gravity release_33b7p52b4zd4hcue7jgz23l3du

by Meir Shimon

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2022  

Abstract

We explore cosmological implications of a genuinely Weyl invariant (WI) gravitational interaction. The latter reduces to general relativity in a particular conformal frame for which the gravitational coupling and active gravitational masses are fixed. Specifically, we consider a cosmological model in this framework that is dynamically identical to the standard model (SM) of cosmology. However, kinematics of test particles traveling in the new background metric is modified thanks to a new (cosmological) fundamental mass scale, γ, of the model. Since the lapse-function of the new metric is radially-dependent any incoming photon experiences (gravitational) red/blueshift in the comoving frame, unlike in the SM. Distance scales are modified as well due to the scale γ. The claimed 4.4σ tension level between the locally measured Hubble constant, H_0, with SH0ES and the corresponding value inferred from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) could then be significantly alleviated by an earlier-than-thought recombination. Assuming vanishing spatial curvature, either one of the Planck 2018 (P18) or dark energy survey (DES) yr1 data sets subject to the SH0ES prior imply that γ^-1 is O(100) times larger than the Hubble scale, H_0^-1. Considering P18+SH0ES or P18+DES+SH0ES data set combinations, the odds against vanishing γ are over 1000:1 and 2000:1, respectively, and the model is strongly favored over the SM with a deviance information criterion (DIC) gain ≳ 10 and ≳ 12, respectively. The tension is reduced in this model to ∼ 1.5 and 1.3 σ, respectively. We conclude that the H_0 tension may simply result from a yet unrecognized fundamental symmetry of the gravitational interaction – Weyl invariance. (abridged)
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Date   2022-04-04
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arXiv  2012.10879v3
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