Clusters of galaxies in a Weyl geometric approach to gravity

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Weyl geometric scalar tensor gravity model to explain galaxy cluster dark halos, showing promising preliminary results that align with observed data for most tested clusters.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gravity model based on Weyl geometry that predicts galaxy cluster masses from baryonic matter, differing from standard dark matter models.

Findings

Model predicts cluster masses within 1σ error for most cases.

Encouraging preliminary agreement with empirical data for 17 clusters.

Highlights differences due to background theories like Einstein gravity and WST.

Abstract

A model for the dark halos of galaxy clusters, based on the Weyl geometric scalar tensor theory of gravity (WST) with a MOND-like approximation, is proposed. It is uniquely determined by the baryonic mass distribution of hot gas and stars. A first heuristic check against empirical data for 19 clusters (2 of which are outliers), taken from the literature, shows encouraging results. Modulo a caveat resulting from different background theories (Einstein gravity plus $\Lambda CDM$ versus WST), the total mass for 15 of the outlier reduced ensemble of 17 clusters seems to be predicted correctly (in the sense of overlapping $1\,\sigma$ error intervals).