Modifying gravity with the aether: An alternative to dark matter

Abstract

There is evidence that Newton and Einstein's theories of gravity cannot explain the dynamics of a universe made up solely of baryons and radiation. To be able to understand the properties of galaxies, clusters of galaxies and the universe on the whole it has become commonplace to invoke the presence of dark matter. An alternative approach is to modify the gravitational field equations to accommodate observations. We propose a new class of gravitational theories in which we add a new degree of freedom, the Aether, in the form of a vector field that is coupled covariantly, but nonminimally, with the space-time metric. We explore the Newtonian and non-Newtonian limits, discuss the conditions for these theories to be consistent and explore their effect on cosmology.