BRANEWORLDS AND DARK MATTER

Abstract

Two problems related to dark matter are considered in the context of a braneworld model in which the confinement of gauge fields on the brane is achieved by invoking a confining potential. First, we show that the virial mass discrepancy can be addressed if the conserved geometrical term appearing in this model is considered as an energy–momentum tensor of an unknown type of matter, the so-called X-matter whose equation of state (EoS) is also obtained. Second, the galaxy rotation curves are explained by assuming an anisotropic energy–momentum tensor for the X-matter.