Model-Independent Tests of Cosmic Acceleration

Future cosmological surveys will have the ability to measure the growth of large-scale structure with accuracy sufficient for discriminating between different models of dark energy and modified gravity. The principal component analysis can be an efficient way of storing information about the linear growth of structure in a model-independent way. I describe how one can test different models of large-scale structure formation using the information stored in the principal components of linear growth, as opposed to directly fitting each of the models to data. I demonstrate how this information can be used to constrain some modified gravity models or the mass hierarchy of massive neutrinos, as examples.