English

Can Cosmic Structure form without Dark Matter?

Astrophysics 2008-11-26 v1

Abstract

One of the prime pieces of evidence for dark matter is the observation of large overdense regions in the universe. Since we know from the cosmic microwave background that the regions that contained the most baryons when the universe was ~400,000 years old were overdense by only one part in ten thousand, perturbations had to have grown since then by a factor greater than (1+z)1180(1+z_*)\simeq 1180 where zz_* is the epoch of recombination. This enhanced growth does not happen in general relativity, so dark matter is needed in the standard theory. We show here that enhanced growth can occur in alternatives to general relativity, in particular in Bekenstein's relativistic version of MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). The vector field introduced in that theory for a completely different reason plays a key role in generating the instability that produces large cosmic structures today.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0608602,
  title  = {Can Cosmic Structure form without Dark Matter?},
  author = {Scott Dodelson and Michele Liguori},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0608602},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures