Related papers: Do old globular clusters in low mass galaxies disp…
MOND-- modified Newtonian dynamics-- may be viewed as an algorithm for calculating the distribution of force in an astronomical object from the observed distribution of baryonic matter. The fact that it works for galaxies is quite…
The distribution of galaxies provides an ideal laboratory to test for deviations from General Relativity. In particular, redshift-space distortions are commonly used to constrain modifications to the Poisson equation, which governs the…
The premier alternative to the dark matter paradigm is modified gravity. Following an introduction to the relevant phenomenology of galaxies, I review the MOND paradigm, an effective summary of the observations which any theory must…
General Relativity (GR) was proven via the direct detection of gravitational waves from the mergers of the binary black holes and binary neutron stars by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. These detections confirmed the…
Based on the current detectable cataclysmic variable (CV) population in Galactic globular clusters (GCs), we show that there is not a clear relation between the number of sources per unit of mass and the stellar encounter rate, the cluster…
It is a well-known fact that the gravitational effect of dark matter in galaxies is only noticeable when the orbital accelerations drop below $a_0 \simeq 2\times 10^{-8}$ cm s$^{-1}$ (Milgrom's Law). This peculiarity of the dynamic…
Galaxy rotation curves determined observationally out to a radius well beyond the galaxy cores can provide a critical test of modified gravity models without dark matter. The predicted rotational velocity curve obtained from…
We investigate the in-spiraling timescales of globular clusters in dwarf spheroidal (dSph) and dwarf elliptical (dE) galaxies, due to dynamical friction. We address the problem of these timescales having been variously estimated in the…
Dynamical friction implies a consistency check on any system where dark matter particles are hypothesised to explain orbital dynamics requiring more mass under Newtonian gravity than is directly detectable. Introducing the assumption of a…
Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) has long been known to fail in galaxy clusters, implying a residual missing mass problem for clusters in this context. Here, using mass profiles derived from strong- and weak-lensing shear, as well as…
We argue that the conjectured dark mater in the Universe may be endowed with a new kind of gravitational charge that couples to a short range gravitational interaction mediated by a massive vector field. A model is constructed that…
Astronomical observations reveal a major deficiency in our understanding of physics $-$ the detectable mass is insufficient to explain the observed motions in a huge variety of systems given our current understanding of gravity, Einstein's…
Gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters has emerged as a powerful tool to probe the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) paradigm of structure formation in the Universe. Despite the remarkable explanatory power of CDM on large scales, tensions…
Dwarf galaxies are known to exhibit an unusual richness in numbers of globular clusters (GCs), property quantified by the specific frequency ($S_N$), which is high for dwarf and giant elliptical galaxies, but with a minimum for…
Internal dynamical evolution can drive stellar systems into states of high central density. For many star clusters and galactic nuclei, the time scale on which this occurs is significantly less than the age of the universe. As a result,…
Models of $f(R)$ gravity that introduce corrections to the Newtonian potential in the weak field limit are tested at the scale of galaxy clusters. These models can explain the dynamics of spiral and elliptical galaxies without resorting to…
Within the context of modified gravity and dark energy scenarios of the accelerating universe, we study the stability of de Sitter space with respect to inhomogeneous perturbations using a gauge-independent formalism. In modified gravity…
Galaxies are the basic structural element of the universe; galaxy formation theory seeks to explain how these structures came to be. I trace some of the foundational ideas in galaxy formation, with emphasis on the need for non-baryonic cold…
We study gravitational lensing by clusters of galaxies in the context of the generic class of unconventional gravity theories of the scalar--tensor type. For positive energy scalar fields with any dynamics, the bending of light by a weakly…
Gravitational lensing is most often used as a tool to investigate the distribution of (dark) matter in the universe, but, if the mass distribution is known a priori, it becomes, at least in principle, a powerful probe of gravity itself.…