The cosmological background and the “external field” in modified gravity (MOG)

We investigate the contributions of the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric of the standard cosmology as an asymptotic boundary condition on the first-order approximation of the gravitational field in Moffat’s theory of modified gravity (MOG). We also consider contributions due to the fact that the MOG theory does not satisfy the shell theorem or Birkhoff’s theorem, resulting in what is known as the “external field effect” (EFE). We show that while both these effects add small contributions to the radial acceleration law, the result is orders of magnitude smaller than the radial acceleration in spiral galaxies.

Holographic Renormalization in Dense Medium

The holographic renormalization of a charged black brane with or without a dilaton field, whose dual field theory describes a dense medium at finite temperature, is investigated in this paper. In a dense medium, two different thermodynamic descriptions are possible due to an additional conserved charge. These two different thermodynamic ensembles are classified by the asymptotic boundary condition of the bulk gauge field. It is also shown that in the holographic renormalization regularity of all bulk fields can reproduce consistent thermodynamic quantities and that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is nothing but the renormalized thermal entropy of the dual field theory. Furthermore, we find that the Reissner-Nordström AdS black brane is dual to a theory with conformal matter as expected, whereas a charged black brane with a nontrivial dilaton profile is mapped to a theory with nonconformal matter although its leading asymptotic geometry still remains as AdS space.