K-mouflage gravity models that pass Solar System and cosmological constraints

Understand

We show that Solar System tests can place very strong constraints on K-mouflage models of gravity, which are coupled scalar field models with nontrivial kinetic terms that screen the fifth force in regions of large gravitational acceleration.

• In particular, the bounds on the anomalous perihelion of the Moon imposes stringent restrictions on the K-mouflage Lagrangian density, which can be met when the contributions of higher-order operators in the static regime are sufficiently small.
• The bound on the rate of change of the gravitational strength in the Solar System constrains the coupling strength $\beta$ to be smaller than $0.1$.
• These two bounds impose tighter constraints than the results from the Cassini satellite and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.