1205.1308 (Mordehai Milgrom)

Testing MOND over a large acceleration range in x-ray ellipticals    [PDF]

Mordehai Milgrom

The gravitational fields of two isolated ellipticals, NGC 720 and NGC 1521, have been recently measured, assuming hydrostatic balance of the hot gas enshrouding them. These galaxies are worthy of special interest: They afford, for the first time to my knowledge, testing MOND in ellipticals with force and quality that, arguably, approach those of rotation-curve tests in disc galaxies: The fields have been probed to very large galactic radii, revealing a large range of mass discrepancies. In the context of MOND, it is noteworthy that the measured accelerations span a wide range, from more than 10a0 to about a0/10, unprecedented in individual ellipticals. I compare the predictions of MOND, based on only the baryonic mass, for reasonable stellar M/L values, with the deduced dynamical mass runs of these galaxies. I find that MOND predicts correctly the runs of the mass discrepancies: from no discrepancy in the inner parts, to approximately a-factor-of-ten discrepancy in the outermost regions probed. For NGC 1521, this is achieved with the same M/L value as best fitted the data in the Newtonian analysis with dark matter, and for NGC 720, with a somewhat larger value than preferred by the Newtonian fit.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.1308