2012/02/13 by Alan Cooney, Dimitrios Psaltis, Cooney, Alan +3
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #History and Developments in Astronomy #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1202.2853
openalex publication_date 2012/02/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The observed flat rotation curves of galaxies require either the presence of dark matter in Newtonian gravitational potentials or a significant modification to the theory of gravity at galactic scales. Detecting relativistic Doppler shifts and gravitational effects in the rotation curves offers a tool for distinguishing between predictions of gravity theories that modify the inertia of particles and those that modify the field equations. These higher-order effects also allow us in principle, to test whether dark matter particles obey the equivalence principle. We calculate here the magnitudes of the relativistic Doppler and gravitational shifts expected in realistic models of galaxies in a general metric theory of gravity. We identify a number of observable quantities that measure independently the special- and general-relativistic effects in each galaxy and suggest that both effects might be detected in a statistical sense by combining appropriately the rotation curves of a large number of galaxies.