Spherical collapse in modified gravity with the Birkhoff theorem

Abstract

We study structure formation in a phenomenological model of modified gravity which interpolates between LambdaCDM and phenomenological DGP-gravity. Generalisation of spherical collapse by using the Birkhoff-theorem along with the modified growth equation shows that the overdensity for spherical collapse delta_c in these models is significantly lowered compared to LambdaCDM, leading to enhanced number densities of massive clusters and enhanced cluster merging rates. We find that delta_c(z) is well fitted by a function of the form delta_c(z) = a - b\exp(-cz). We examine the sensitivity of PLANCK's and SPT's Sunyaev-Zel'dovich survey to constrain the modified gravity parameterisation and find that these experiments can easily distinguish between models with a cosmological constant and modified gravity, if prior constraints from CMB temperature and polarisation anisotropies are included.