Probing Yukawian Gravitational Potential by Numerical Simulations. II. Elliptical Galaxies

TL;DR

This paper uses modified numerical simulations to explore how elliptical galaxy dynamics can test and constrain alternative gravity theories with Yukawa-like potentials, extending the use of computational astrophysics.

Contribution

It introduces a modified Gadget-2 code to simulate elliptical galaxies under Yukawa-like gravitational potentials, enabling new tests of alternative gravity theories.

Findings

Simulations demonstrate the potential to constrain alternative gravity parameters.

Galactic dynamics are sensitive to modifications in gravitational potential.

The approach provides a new tool for testing gravity theories against astronomical observations.

Abstract

Since the Newtonian gravitation is largely used to model with success the structures of the universe, such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies, for example, a way to probe and constrain alternative theories, in the weak field limit, is to apply them to model the structures of the universe. We then modified the well known Gadget-2 code to probe alternative theories of gravitation through galactic dynamics. In particular, we modified the Gadget-2 code to probe alternatives theories whose weak field limits have a Yukawa-like gravitational potential. As a first application of this modified Gadget-2 code we simulate the evolution of elliptical galaxies. These simulations show that galactic dynamics can be used to constrain the parameters associated with alternative theories of gravitation.