Strong lensing as a test for conformal Weyl gravity

Abstract

Conformal Weyl gravity (CWG) predicts galactic rotation curves without invoking dark matter. This makes CWG an interesting candidate theory as an alternative to general relativity (GR). This removal of the necessity for dark matter arises because the exact exterior solution in CWG for a static, spherically symmetric source provides a linear potential γr, which can explain the observed galactic rotation curves with a value for γ of ∼+10−26 m−1. Previous work has also shown that CWG can explain lensing observations, but with γ ∼ −10−26 m−1, in order to ensure converging rays of light rather than diverging ones. Even though different expressions for the angle of deflection have been derived in CWG in order to remove this inconsistency, this article shows that the γ required to fit the lensing data is several orders of magnitude higher than that required to fit galactic rotation curves.