A general class of gravitational theories as alternatives to dark matter where the speed of gravity always equals the speed of light

Abstract

A number of theories of gravity have been proposed as proxies for dark matter in the regime of galaxies and cosmology. The recent observations of gravitational waves (GW170817) from the merger of two neutron stars, followed by an electromagnetic counterpart (GW170817a) have placed stringent constraints on the difference of the speed of gravity to the speed of light, severely restricting the phenomenological viability of such theories. We revisit the impact of these observations on the Tensor-Vector-Scalar (TeVeS) paradigm of relativistic Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and demonstrate the existence of a previously unknown class of this paradigm where the speed of gravity always equals the speed of light. We show that this holds without altering the usual (bimetric) MOND phenomenology in galaxies.