Dynamical Friction in Nonlocal Gravity

Abstract

Abstract We study dynamical friction in the Newtonian regime of nonlocal gravity (NLG), which is a classical nonlocal generalization of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. The nonlocal aspect of NLG simulates dark matter. The attributes of the resulting effective dark matter are described and the main physical predictions of NLG, which has a characteristic length scale of order 1 kpc, for galactic dynamics are presented. Within the framework of NLG, we derive the analog of Chandrasekhar’s formula for dynamical friction. The astrophysical implications of the results for the apparent rotation of a central bar subject to dynamical friction in a barred spiral galaxy are briefly discussed.