Constraining modified theories of gravity with the galaxy bispectrum

We explore the use of the galaxy bispectrum induced by the nonlinear gravitational evolution as a possible probe to test general scalar-tensor theories with second-order equations of motion. We find that time dependence of the leading second-order kernel is approximately characterized by one parameter, the second-order index, which is expected to trace the higher-order growth history of the Universe. We show that our new parameter can significantly carry new information about the nonlinear growth of structure. We forecast future constraints on the second-order index as well as the equation-of-state parameter and the growth index.