Related papers: Using globular clusters to test gravity in the wea…
Small distortions in the images of Einstein rings or giant arcs offer the exciting prospect of detecting dark matter haloes or subhaloes of mass below $10^9$M$_{\odot}$, most of which are too small to have made a visible galaxy. A very…
Measurements of the surface brightness distribution and of the velocity dispersion profile have been so far used to infer the inner dynamics of globular clusters. We show that those observations do not trace back the dark matter potentially…
An analytical understanding of the strongly nonlinear regime of gravitational collapse has been difficult to achieve. The only insight has been the stable clustering hypothesis, which assumes that the number of neighbors for objects…
Many astrophysical and galaxy-scale cosmological problems require a well determined gravitational potential which is often modeled by observers under strong assumptions. Globular clusters (GCs) surrounding galaxies can be used as dynamical…
Dark matter is required in galaxies at galactocentric radii that are larger than the $a_0$-radius, which is where the gravitational acceleration generated by baryons of the galaxy equals the constant $a_0=1.2\times 10^{-10}$ms$^{-2}$ known…
Analysing the weak lensing distortions of the images of faint background galaxies provides a means to constrain the average mass distribution of cluster galaxies and potentially to test the extent of their dark matter haloes as a function…
In a series of two papers, we test the primordial scenario of globular cluster formation using results of high-resolutions N-body simulations. In this first paper we study the initial relaxation of a stellar core inside a live dark matter…
The dynamics of globular clusters has been studied in great detail in the context of general relativity as well as with modifications of gravity that strongly depart from the standard paradigm such as MOND. However, at present there are no…
Modifications to Newtonian dynamics at low accelerations have long been proposed as an alternative to dark matter to explain galaxy rotation curves. More recently, similar corrections have been invoked to interpret anomalies in…
The controversy "dark matter vs. modified gravity" constitutes a major topic of discussion. It was proposed that dynamical friction could be used to discriminate between the two alternatives. Analytic calculations indicate that, with…
We present an analysis of different sets of gravitational N-body simulations, all describing the dynamics of discrete particles with a small initial velocity dispersion. They encompass very different initial particle configurations,…
Observations show that about the 20% of the Universe is composed by invisible (dark) matter (DM), for which many candidates have been proposed. In particular, the anomalous behavior of rotational curves of galaxies (i.e. the flattening at…
We test the modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) theory with the velocity-dispersion profiles of Galactic globular clusters populating the outermost region of the Milky Way halo, where the Galactic acceleration is lower than the…
We consider the consequences of applying general relativity to the description of the dynamics of a galaxy, given the observed flattened rotation curves. The galaxy is modeled as a stationary axially symmetric pressure-free fluid. In spite…
Globular clusters (GCs) are often used to estimate the dark matter content of galaxies, especially dwarfs, where other kinematic tracers are lacking. These estimates typically assume spherical symmetry and dynamical equilibrium, assumptions…
Deep two-color imaging of 40 clusters of galaxies with the NOT and the University of Hawaii 2.24-m telescope is used to measure the weak gravitational shear acting on faint background galaxies. From this, maps of the projected cluster mass…
Globular clusters (GCs) in the Milky Way have characteristic velocity dispersions that are consistent with the predictions of Newtonian gravity, and may be at odds with Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). We discuss a modified gravity (MOG)…
Without observational or theoretical modifications, Newtonian and general relativity seem to be unable to explain gravitational behavior of large structure of the universe. The assumption of dark matter solves this problem without modifying…
Using a recent homogeneous sample of 40 high quality velocity dispersion profiles for Galactic globular clusters, we study the low gravitational acceleration regime relevant to the outskirts of these systems. We find that a simple empirical…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…