Long-Range Models of Modified Gravity and Their Agreement with Solar System and Double Pulsar Data

TL;DR

This paper evaluates various long-range modified gravity models against recent precise observational data from the solar system and double pulsar systems, assessing their viability and potential to explain anomalies like Pioneer and Saturn perihelion precession.

Contribution

It provides new constraints on modified gravity models using the latest observational data, independent of the phenomena they were initially designed to explain.

Findings

Certain models are ruled out by planetary motion data.

Some models can account for Saturn's anomalous perihelion precession.

Constraints limit the parameter space of viable modified gravity theories.

Abstract

Many long-range modifications of the Newtonian/Einsteinian standard laws of gravity have been proposed in the recent past to explain various celestial phenomena occurring at different scales ranging from solar system to the entire universe. The most famous ones are the so-called Pioneer anomaly, {i.e.} a still unexplained acceleration detected in the telemetry of the Pioneer 10/11 spacecraft after they passed the 20 AU threshold in the solar system, the non-Keplerian profiles of the velocity rotation curves of several galaxies and the cosmic acceleration. We use the latest observational determinations of the planetary motions in the solar system and in the double pulsar system to put constraints on such models independently of the phenomena for which they were originally proposed. We also deal with the recently detected anomalous perihelion precession of Saturn and discuss the possibility that it can be explained by some of the aforementioned models of modified gravity.