Understanding Galaxy Rotation Curves with Verlinde's Emergent Gravity

TL;DR

This study tests Verlinde's emergent gravity against galaxy rotation data, finding good agreement and suggesting it could explain galactic dynamics without dark matter.

Contribution

It provides empirical validation of Verlinde's emergent gravity using a large galaxy dataset, showing promising results as an alternative to dark matter.

Findings

Predicted and observed accelerations agree within small offsets.

Offset and scatter decrease under a quasi de Sitter universe assumption.

Results support emergent gravity as a potential solution to the missing mass problem.

Abstract

We present the results from the analysis of galaxy rotation curves with Verlinde's emergent gravity. We use the data in the SPARC (Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves) database, which contains a sample of 175 nearby disk galaxies with 3.6 $\mu$m surface photometry and rotation curves. We compute the gravitational acceleration at different galactocentric radii expected from the baryon distribution of the galaxies with the emergent gravity, and compare it with the observed gravitational acceleration derived from galactic rotation curves. The predicted and observed accelerations agree well with a mean offset $\mu{\rm [log(g_{obs})-log(g_{Ver})]}=-0.060\pm0.004$ and a scatter $\sigma{\rm [log(g_{obs})-log(g_{Ver})]}=0.137\pm0.004$ by assuming a de Sitter universe. These offset and scatter become smaller when we assume a more realistic universe, quasi de Sitter universe, as $\mu=-0.027\pm0.003$ and $\sigma=0.129\pm0.003$. Our results suggest that Verlinde's emergent gravity could be a good solution to the missing mass problem without introducing dark matter.