Conditions for the Absence of Infrared Sensitivity in Cosmological Probes in Any Gravity Theories

Abstract

Large-scale surveys allow us to construct cosmological probes such as galaxy clustering, weak gravitational lensing, the luminosity distance, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The gauge-invariant descriptions of these cosmological probes reveal the presence of numerous relativistic effects in the cosmological probes, and they are sensitive (or even divergent) to the long wave-length fluctuations in the initial conditions. In the standard $\Lambda$CDM model, this infrared sensitivity is absent due to subtle cancellations among the relativistic contributions, once the Einstein equation is used. Here we derive the most general conditions for the absence of infrared sensitivity in the cosmological probes without committing to general relativity. We discuss the implications of our results for gravity theories beyond general relativity.