Constraining DHOST theories with linear growth of matter density fluctuations

We investigate the potential of cosmological observations, such as galaxy surveys, for constraining degenerate higher-order scalar-tensor (DHOST) theories, focusing in particular on the linear growth of the matter density fluctuations. We develop a formalism to describe the evolution of the matter density fluctuations during the matter dominated era and in the early stage of the dark energy dominated era in DHOST theories, and give an approximate expression for the gravitational growth index in terms of several parameters characterizing the theory and the background solution under consideration. By employing the current observational constraints on the growth index, we obtain a new constraint on a parameter space of DHOST theories. Combining our result with other constraints obtained from the Newtonian stellar structure, we show that the degeneracy between the effective parameters of DHOST theories can be broken without using the Hulse-Taylor pulsar constraint.