Clusters of galaxies in a Weyl geometric approach to gravity

Abstract

A model for the dark halos of galaxy clusters, based on the Weyl geometric scalar tensor theory of gravity (WST) with a MOND-like approximation, is proposed. It is uniquely determined by the baryonic mass distribution of hot gas and stars. A first heuristic check against empirical data for 19 clusters (2 of which are outliers), taken from the literature, shows encouraging results. Modulo a caveat resulting from different background theories (Einstein gravity plus $\Lambda CDM$ versus WST), the total mass for 15 of the outlier reduced ensemble of 17 clusters seems to be predicted correctly (in the sense of overlapping $1\,\sigma$ error intervals).