N-body Simulations of Large-Scale Structure in the Generalized Cubic Covariant Galileon Model
Luís Atayde, Noemi Frusciante, Baojiu Li
astro-ph.CO
Submitted: 2026-08-06
Updated: 2026-08-10
Comments: 12 pages, 4 figures,
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: We present the first N-body simulations of structure formation in the Generalized Cubic Covariant Galileon (GCCG) model.
Terminology
Abstract
We present the first N-body simulations of structure formation in the Generalized Cubic Covariant Galileon (GCCG) model. This theory extends the cubic covariant Galileon through power-law kinetic and cubic derivative interactions and admits tracker solutions leading to late-time cosmic acceleration. Previous studies of GCCG have mostly focused on the background, linear perturbations, or semi-analytic nonlinear prescriptions. Here we implement the nonlinear scalar-field equation in the ECOSMOG adaptive-mesh refinement code, allowing us to follow the coupled evolution of matter clustering and Vainshtein screening in the fully nonlinear regime. We quantify the impact of GCCG on the nonlinear matter power spectrum and compare the simulation results with predictions from the halo-model reaction approach. For the parameter choices considered, the GCCG model enhances the matter power spectrum relative to the corresponding QCDM cosmology, with the effect increasing towards low redshift and reaching approximately 7% at z=0 in the transition to the nonlinear regime. At smaller scales, the enhancement decreases as a consequence of Vainshtein screening. We find that the reaction framework captures the qualitative behaviour of the simulations, while residual differences appear on deeply nonlinear scales. We also analyse the abundance of dark matter haloes, finding an enhancement relative to QCDM that becomes more pronounced towards lower redshift and in the high-mass tail. These simulations provide the first nonlinear calibration of structure formation in GCCG and establish the range of validity of efficient semi-analytical predictions for applications to forthcoming large-scale-structure surveys.
Sources
- Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
- Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae
- Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters
- Detection of the Baryon Acoustic Peak in the Large-Scale Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
- The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological analysis of the DR12 galaxy sample
- Cosmology Intertwined II: The Hubble Constant Tension
- The Cosmological Constant
- Modified Gravity and Cosmology: An Update by the CANTATA Network
- DESI 2024 III: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from Galaxies and Quasars
- DESI 2024 IV: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from the Lyman Alpha Forest
- Dynamical Dark Energy in light of the DESI DR2 Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations Measurements
- DESI DR2 Results II: Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Cosmological Constraints
- Constraints on Dynamical Dark Energy from Multiple Probes in the Full Dark Energy Survey
- Hints of Nonminimally Coupled Gravity in DESI 2024 Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Measurements
- Assessing cosmological evidence for non-minimal coupling
- Matching current observational constraints with nonminimally coupled dark energy
- From k-essence to generalised Galileons
- Generalized G-inflation: Inflation with the most general second-order field equations
- The Theorem of Ostrogradsky
- GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
Related papers
- Angular clustering and bias of photometric quasars in the Kilo-Degree Survey Data Release 4
- A Novel kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Estimator for Electron-Electron Correlations
- Magnetic fields at the dawn of structure formation I. The CARLA J1510+5958 proto-cluster
- Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Results: Weak Lensing and Galaxy Clustering Cosmological Analysis Framework
- Exploring the Impact of Systematic Bias in Type Ia Supernova Cosmology Across Diverse Dark Energy Parametrizations
- Non-Gaussian Galaxy Stochasticity and the Noise-Field Formulation