Spherical Collapse in Chameleon Models

May, 2010
27 pages
Published in:
  • JCAP 08 (2010) 033
e-Print:

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Abstract: (arXiv)
We study the gravitational collapse of an overdensity of nonrelativistic matter under the action of gravity and a chameleon scalar field. We show that the spherical collapse model is modified by the presence of a chameleon field. In particular, we find that even though the chameleon effects can be potentially large at small scales, for a large enough initial size of the inhomogeneity the collapsing region possesses a thin shell that shields the modification of gravity induced by the chameleon field, recovering the standard gravity results. We analyse the behaviour of a collapsing shell in a cosmological setting in the presence of a thin shell and find that, in contrast to the usual case, the critical density for collapse depends on the initial comoving size of the inhomogeneity.
Note:
  • matches printed version
  • chameleon
  • field theory: scalar
  • gravitation: model
  • matter: nonrelativistic
  • gravitation: collapse
  • geodesic
  • density: perturbation
  • galaxy: formation
  • space-time: Robertson-Walker
  • numerical calculations