Dark Matter or a New Force?

In this contribution to the conference "Beyond Einstein: Historical Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation and Cosmology in the Twentieth Century", we give a critical status report of attempts to explain the late accelerated expansion of the universe by modifications of general relativity. Our brief review of such alternatives to the standard cosmological model addresses mainly readers who have not pursued the vast recent literature on this subject.

It has recently been suggested that observed galaxy rotation curves can be accounted for by general relativity without recourse to dark-matter halos. Good fits have been produced to observed galatic rotation curves using this model. We show that the implied total mass is infinite, adding to the evidence opposing the hypothesis.

This work wants to show how standard General Relativity (GR) is able to explain galactic rotation curves without the need for dark matter, this starting from the idea that when Einstein's equations are applied to the dynamics of a galaxy embedded in an expanding universe they do not reduce to Poisson's equation but a generalisation of it taking cosmological expansion into account. A non-linear scheme to perturb Einstein's field equations around the Robertson-Walker (R-W) metr...

We study disc galaxies in the framework of General Relativity to focus on the possibility that, even in the low energy limit, there are relevant corrections with respect to the purely Newtonian approach. Our analysis encompasses the model both considering a low energy expansion and exact solutions, making it clear the connection between these different approaches. In particular, we focus on two different limits: the well known gravitomagnetic analogy and a new limit, called s...

Considering some modified Newtonian potentials and the Hubble law in writing the total energy of a test mass located at the edge of a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe, we obtain several modified Friedmann equations. Interestingly enough, our study shows that the employed potentials, while some of them have some successes in modelling the spiral galaxies rotation curves, may also address an accelerated universe. This fact indicates that dark energy and dark matter may ...

The non-Keplerian galactic rotational curves and the gravitational lensing data strongly indicate a significant dark matter component in the universe. Moreover, these data can be combined to deduce the equation of state of dark matter. Yet, the existence of dark matter has been challenged following the tradition of critical scientific spirit. In the process, the theory of general relativity itself has been questioned and various modified theories of gravitation have been prop...

Recently, several interesting proposals were made modifying the law of gravity on large scales, within a sensible relativistic formulation. This allows a precise formulation of the idea that such a modification might account for galaxy rotation curves, instead of the usual interpretation of these curves as evidence for dark matter. We here summarize several observational constraints which any such modification must satisfy, and which we believe make more challenging any inter...

In this paper we study consistent solutions of spherically symmetric space in metric f(R) gravity theory. Here we inversely obtain a generic action from metric solutions that describe flat rotation curves in spiral galaxies without dark matter. Then we show that obtained solutions are in conformity with Tully-Fisher relation and modified Newtonian dynamics, which are two strong constraints in justification of flat rotation curves in spiral galaxies.

Wherever one talks of dark matter, one does so where there is an observable matter and an associated unsolved dynamical issue to be settled. We promote this observation to the status of an axiom and conjecture that there is a dark companion to every baryonic matter, subject to certain rules as regards its size, distribution. To pursue the proposition in a systematic way we resort to the rotation curves of spiral galaxies. They have non classical features. First, we design a s...

6 pages; Subm. to AIP Conf. Proceedings