Geometric origin of the galaxies' dark side

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Einstein's conformal gravity can naturally explain galactic rotation curves without dark matter by using a new exact solution describing galaxy geometry through a singular rescaling of Schwarzschild spacetime.

Contribution

It introduces a novel exact solution in conformal gravity that accounts for galactic rotation curves without dark matter, highlighting a geometric origin for the galaxies' dark side.

Findings

Galactic rotation curves are well fitted without dark matter.

The model's free parameter and mass-to-luminosity ratios are consistent with observations.

The solution is asymptotically Anti-de Sitter and geodetically complete.

Abstract

We show that Einstein's conformal gravity is able to explain simply on the geometric ground the galactic rotation curves without need to introduce any modification in both the gravitational as well as in the matter sector of the theory. The geometry of each galaxy is described by a metric obtained making a singular rescaling of the Schwarzschild's spacetime. The new exact solution, which is asymptotically Anti-de Sitter, manifests an unattainable singularity at infinity that can not be reached in finite proper time, namely, the spacetime is geodetically complete. It deserves to be notice that we here think different from the usual. Indeed, instead of making the metric singularity-free, we make it apparently but harmlessly even more singular then the Schwarzschild's one. Finally, it is crucial to point that the Weyl's conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken to the new singular vacuum rather then the asymptotically flat Schwarzschild's one. The metric, is unique according to: the null energy condition, the zero acceleration for photons in the Newtonian regime, and the homogeneity of the Universe at large scales. Once the matter is conformally coupled to gravity, the orbital velocity for a probe star in the galaxy turns out to be asymptotically constant consistently with the observations and the Tully-Fisher relation. Therefore, we compare our model with a sample of 175 galaxies and we show that our velocity profile very well interpolates the galactic rotation-curves for a proper choice of the only free parameter in the metric and the the mass to luminosity ratios, which turn out to be close to 1 consistently with the absence of dark matter.