Cosmological constraints on scalar–tensor gravity and the variation of the gravitational constant

Abstract

We present cosmological constraints on the scalar-tensor theory of gravity by analyzing the angular power spectrum data of the cosmic microwave background obtained from the Planck 2015 results together with the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) data. We find that the inclusion of the BAO data improves the constraints on the time variation of the effective gravitational constant by more than $10\%$, that is, the time variation of the effective gravitational constant between the recombination and the present epochs is constrained as $G_{\rm rec}/G_0-1 <1.9\times 10^{-3}\ (95.45\%\ {\rm C.L.})$ and $G_{\rm rec}/G_0-1 <5.5\times 10^{-3}\ (99.99 \%\ {\rm C.L.})$. We also discuss the dependence of the constraints on the choice of the prior.