Speaker: Furqaan Yusaf
Structure formation without dark matter is a ongoing challenge to theories of modified gravity. In this talk I will hope to show how certain microscopic and well motivated (string theory based) modifications to gravity using space-time defects may be able to incorporate the enhanced structure formation required to fit observations without dark matter. This mechanism is not presented as an alternative to dark matter, as natural dark matter candidates fall easily out of string theory. However, this approach shows that there can be more than one mechanism at work which drove structure formation in our early universe and also provides a microscopic motivation for the modifications to gravity.