2025/02/18 by Nastassia Grimm, Camille Bonvin, Grimm, Nastassia +3
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Scientific Research and Discoveries
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.12843
openalex publication_date 2025/02/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Since dark matter particles have never been directly detected, we do not know how they move, and in particular we do not know how they fall inside gravitational potential wells. Usually it is assumed that dark matter only interacts gravitationally with itself and with particles of the standard model, and therefore that its motion is governed by Euler's equation. In this paper, we do test this assumption directly at cosmological scales, by combining measurements of galaxy velocities with measurements of gravitational potential wells, encoded in the Weyl potential. We find that current data are consistent with Euler's equation at redshifts z∈ [0.3,0.8], and we place constraints on the strength of a potential fifth force, which would alter the way dark matter particles fall. We find that a positive fifth force cannot exceed 7% of the gravitational interaction strength, while a negative fifth force is limited to 21%. The coming generation of surveys, including the Legacy Survey of Space and Time of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument will drastically improve the constraints, allowing to constrain a departure from pure gravitational interaction at the level of 2%.