Conformal Gravity: Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Abstract

This short review examines recent progress in understanding dark matter, dark energy, and galactic halos using theory that departs minimally from standard particle physics and cosmology. Strict conformal symmetry (local Weyl scaling covariance), postulated for all elementary massless fields, retains standard fermion and gauge boson theory but modifies Einstein-Hilbert general relativity and the Higgs scalar field model, with no new physical fields. Subgalactic phenomenology is retained. Without invoking dark matter, conformal gravity and a conformal Higgs model fit empirical data on galactic rotational velocities, galactic halos, and Hubble expansion including dark energy.