Visible and Dark Matter Profiles in a Non-Minimally Coupled Model

Abstract

A previous work found that a nonminimally coupled theory of gravity can, under appropriate conditions, give rise to an additional contribution to the field equations interpreted as dark matter [1]: in particular, the density of this dark matter component was found to scale as a power of the density of visible matter. However, no explicit solution for the modified field equations was provided, so that a direct computation of the specific density profile followed by visible matter is missing. This question is now addressed: analytical solutions to the modified field equations are derived in the appropriate perturbative regime and characterised, with an emphasis on directly obtaining the visible matter profile in a self-consistent way. We compare with known profiles for visible and dark matter and obtain constraints on the parameters of the model.