Galactic rotation curves in conformal gravity

Abstract

We review some recent work by Mannheim and O'Brien on the systematics of galactic rotation curves in the conformal gravity theory. In this work the conformal theory was applied to a comprehensive, high quality sample of spiral galaxies whose rotation curves extend well beyond the galactic optical disks. On galactic scales the conformal gravitational theory departs from the standard Newtonian theory in two distinct ways. One is a local way in which local matter sources within galaxies generate not just Newtonian potentials but linear potentials as well. The other is a global way in which two universal global potentials, one linear the other quadratic, are generated by the rest of the matter in the universe. The study involves a broad set of 138 spiral galaxies of differing luminosities and sizes, and is augmented here through the inclusion of an additional three tidal dwarf galaxies. With its linear and quadratic potentials the conformal theory can account for the systematics of an entire 141 galaxy sample without any need for galactic dark matter, doing so with only one free parameter per galaxy, namely the visible galactic mass to light ratio.

15 pages, 28 figures. This review is based in part on a talk given by one of of us (JGO) at the 8th Biennial Conference on Classical and Quantum Relativistic Dynamics of Particles and Fields held in Florence, Italy in May 2012, and has been prepared for the conference proceedings

References in corpus (5)

• High-Resolution Rotation Curves and Galaxy Mass Models from THINGS
• The rotation curves shapes of late-type dwarf galaxies
• Impact of a global quadratic potential on galactic rotation curves
• Tidal dwarf galaxies as a test of fundamental physics
• Comment on "Impact of a Global Quadratic Potential on Galactic Rotation Curves"

Cited by in corpus (32)

• Teleparallel Gravity: From Theory to Cosmology
• Testing General Relativity in Cosmology
• Mass Generation, the Cosmological Constant Problem, Conformal Symmetry, and the Higgs Boson
• Black hole shadows in fourth-order conformal Weyl gravity
• Some Comments on Ghosts and Unitarity: The Pais-Uhlenbeck Oscillator Revisited
• Restricted phase space thermodynamics of charged AdS black holes in conformal gravity
• Cotton gravity and 84 galaxy rotation curves
• On the Ghost Problem of Conformal Gravity
• Near-extremal black holes in Weyl gravity: Quasinormal modes and geodesic instability
• Astrophysical Gravitational Waves in Conformal Gravity
• Analytic treatment of complete geodesics in a static cylindrically symmetric conformal spacetime
• Modified Dark Matter: Relating Dark Energy, Dark Matter and Baryonic Matter
• Conformal Invariance and the Metrication of the Fundamental Forces
• Canonical charges and asymptotic symmetry algebra of conformal gravity
• Probing alternative cosmologies through the inverse distance ladder
• Testing Modified Dark Matter with Galaxy Clusters: Does Dark Matter know about the Cosmological Constant?
• Comment on "Problems with Mannheim's conformal gravity program"
• Hawking radiation from rotating AdS black holes in conformal gravity
• Astrophysical Tests of Kinematical Conformal Cosmology in Fourth-Order Conformal Weyl Gravity
• Gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries in conformal gravity
• On galaxy rotation curves from a continuum mechanics approach to modified gravity
• Conformal gravity 1-loop partition function
• Anisotropic Conformal Dark Gravity on the Lorentz Tangent Bundle Spacetime
• A Black Hole inside Dark Matter and the Rotation Curves of Galaxies
• Asymptotic symmetry algebra of conformal gravity
• Conformal Gravity Redux: Ghost-turned-Tachyon
• Modeling Dark Matter Halos with Nonlinear Field Theories
• Jacobi stability of circular orbits around conformally invariant Weyl gravity black holes
• Test of conformal gravity as an alternative to dark matter from the observations of elliptical galaxies
• Universal Basic Mass Density inside Dark Matter Halos
• Statistical Strong Lensing as a Test of Conformal Gravity
• Generalized Eddington--Finkelstein Coordinates and Exact Vaidya-Type Solutions in Weyl Conformal Gravity