Constraining brane tension using rotation curves of galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates how brane theory modifies galaxy rotation curves and estimates the brane tension parameter using observational data, revealing varying effects across different dark matter profiles.

Contribution

It provides the first phenomenological analysis constraining brane tension using galaxy rotation curves across multiple dark matter profiles.

Findings

Navarro-Frenk-White profile suggests lower brane tension, indicating significant brane effects.

Burkert profile indicates higher brane tension, implying negligible brane effects.

Results yield weaker bounds on brane tension compared to previous studies.

Abstract

We present in this work a study of brane theory phenomenology focusing on the brane tension parameter, which is the main observable of the theory. We show the modifications steaming from the presence of branes in the rotation curves of spiral galaxies for three well known dark matter density profiles: the Pseudo isothermal, Navarro-Frenk-White and Burkert dark matter density profiles. We estimate the brane tension parameter using a sample of high resolution observed rotation curves of low surface brightness spiral galaxies and a synthetic rotation curve for the three density profiles. Also, the fittings using the brane theory model of the rotation curves are compared with standard Newtonian models. We found that Navarro-Frenk-White model prefers lower values of the brane tension parameter, on the average $\lambda \sim 0.73\times 10^{-3}$ eV$^4$, therefore showing clear brane effects. Burkert case does prefer higher values of the tension parameter, on the average $\lambda \sim 0.93$ eV$^4$ -- $46$ eV$^4$, i.e., negligible brane effects. Whereas pseudo isothermal is an intermediate case. In this context, we found that our results show weaker bounds to the brane tension values in comparison with other bounds found previously.