English

MOND in galaxy groups

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2018-12-04 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Galaxy groups, which have hardly been looked at in MOND, afford probing the acceleration discrepancies in regions of system-parameter space that are not accessible in well-studied galactic systems, such as galaxies, galaxy clusters, and dwarf-spheroidal satellites of galaxies. Groups are typically the size of galaxy-cluster cores, but have masses typically only a few times that of a single galaxy. Accelerations in groups get far below those in galaxies, and far below the MOND acceleration. So much so, that many groups might be affected by the external-field effect, which is unique to MOND, due to background accelerations. Here, I analyze the MOND dynamics of 53 galaxy groups, recently catalogued in 3 lists. Their Newtonian, K-band, dynamical M/LM/L ratios are a few tens to several hundreds solar units, with Md/LK=(56,25,30) M/L\langle{M_d/L_K}\rangle= (56, 25, 30)~M_{\odot}/L_{\odot}, respectively for the 3 lists; thus evincing very large acceleration discrepancies. I find here that MOND requires dynamical MM/LKM_M/L_K values of order 1 M/L1~M_{\odot}/L_{\odot}, with MM/LK=(0.8,0.56,1.0) M/L\langle{M_M/L_K}\rangle=(0.8, 0.56, 1.0) ~M_{\odot}/L_{\odot}, for the 3 lists, which are in good agreement with population-synthesis stellar values, and with those found in individual galaxies. MOND thus accounts for the observed dynamics in those groups with baryons alone, and no need for dark matter -- an important extension of MOND analysis from galaxies to galactic systems, which, to boot, have characteristic sizes of several hundred kiloparsecs, and accelerations much lower than probed before -- only a few percent of MOND's a0a_0. The acceleration discrepancies evinced by these groups thus conform to the deep-MOND prediction: g(gNa0)1/2g\approx (g_Na_0)^{1/2}, down to these very low accelerations (gg is the measured, and gNg_N the baryonic, Newtonian acceleration).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.03089,
  title  = {MOND in galaxy groups},
  author = {Mordehai Milgrom},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.03089},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 text pages and 3 Tables. Added Figures and references, and expanded discussion. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

R2 v1 2026-06-23T04:30:55.448Z