We study the use of type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) in the context of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, taking as a working example induced gravity, equivalent to Jordan-Brans-Dicke theory. Winking at accurate and precision cosmology, we test the correction introduced by a time variation of the Newton’s constant, predicted by scalar-tensor theories, on the SNe distance modulus relation. We find that for induced gravity the coupling parameter is constrained from ξ<0.0095 (95% CL) using Pantheon SNe data alone down to ξ<0.00063 (95% CL) combining {\em Planck} DR3 CMB information together with a compilation of BAO measurements from BOSS DR12 and SNe data. In this minimal case the improvements in terms of constraints on the cosmological parameters coming from the addition of SNe data to CMB and BAO measurements is limited, ∼7% on the 95% CL upper bound on ξ. Allowing for the value of the gravitational constant today to depart from the Newton’s constant, we find that the addition of SNe further tightens the constraints obtained by CMB and BAO data on the standard cosmological parameters and by 22% on the coupling parameter, i.e. ξ<0.00064 at 95% CL. We finally show that in this class of modified gravity models the use a prior on the absolute magnitude MB in combination with the Pantheon SNe sample leads to results which are very consistent with those obtained by imposing a prior on H0, as happens for other {\em early} solutions which accommodate a larger value of H0 compared to the ΛCDM results.
Reference:
Type Ia supernovae data with scalar-tensor gravity, Mario Ballardini, Fabio Finelli, arXiv:2112.15126