The aim of this paper is to answer the following two questions: (1) Given cosmological observations of the expansion history and linear perturbations in a range of redshifts and scales as precise as is required, which of the properties of dark energy could actually be reconstructed without imposing any parameterization? (2) Are these observables sufficient to rule out not just a particular dark energy model, but the entire general class of viable models comprising a single scalar field?This paper bears both good and bad news. On one hand, we find that the goal of reconstructing dark energy models is fundamentally limited by the unobservability of the present values of the matter density Ωm0, the perturbation normalization σ8 as well as the present matter power spectrum. On the other, we find that, under certain conditions, cosmological observations can nonetheless rule out the entire class of the most general single scalar-field models, i.e. those based on the Horndeski Lagrangian.

Nonlinear, ghost-free massive gravity has two tensor fields; when both are dynamical, the mass of the graviton can lead to cosmic acceleration that agrees with background data, even in the absence of a cosmological constant. Here the question of the stability of linear perturbations in this bimetric theory is examined. Instabilities are presented for several classes of models, and simple criteria for the cosmological stability of massive bigravity are derived. In this way, we identify a particular selfaccelerating bigravity model, infinite-branch bigravity (IBB), which exhibits both viable background evolution and stable linear perturbations. We discuss the modified gravity parameters for IBB, which do not reduce to the standard ΛCDM result at early times, and compute the combined likelihood from measured growth data and type Ia supernovae. IBB predicts a present matter density Ωm0 = 0.18 and an equation of state w(z) = −0.79 + 0.21z/(1 + z). The growth rate of structure is well-approximated at late times by f (z) ≈ Ω 0.47The implications of the linear instability for other bigravity models are discussed: the instability does not necessarily rule these models out, but rather presents interesting questions about how to extract observables from them when linear perturbation theory does not hold.

In this paper we study gravitational wave perturbations in a cosmological setting of bigravity which can reproduce the ΛCDM background and large scale structure. We show that in general gravitational wave perturbations are unstable and only for very fine tuned initial conditions such a cosmology is viable. We quantify this fine tuning. We argue that similar fine tuning is also required in the scalar sector in order to prevent the tensor instability to be induced by second order scalar perturbations. Finally, we show that due to this power law instability, models of bigravity can lead to a large tensor to scalar ratio even for low scale inflation.

We consider the consequences of having no prior knowledge of the true dark energy model for the interpretation of cosmological observations. The magnitude of redshift-space distortions and weaklensing shear is determined by the metric on the geodesics of which galaxies and light propagate. We show that, given precise enough observations, we can use these data to completely reconstruct the metric on our past lightcone and therefore to measure the scale-and time-dependence of the anisotropic stress and the evolution of the gravitational potentials in a model-independent manner. Since both dark matter and dark energy affect the visible sector only through the gravitational field they produce, they are inseparable without a model for dark energy: galaxy bias cannot be measured and therefore the distribution of dark matter determined; the peculiar velocity of dark matter can be identified with that of the galaxies only when the equivalence principle holds. Given these limitations, we show how one can nonetheless build tests for classes of dark energy models which depend on making measurements at multiple scales at a particular redshift. They are null tests on the model-independent observables, do not require modeling evolution in time and do not require any parametrization of the free functions of these models-such as the sound speed. We show that one in principle could rule out or constrain the whole class of the most-general scalar-tensor theories even without assuming the quasi-static limit.