Motion in Alternative Theories of Gravity

Although general relativity (GR) passes all present experimental tests with flying colors, it remains important to study alternative theories of gravity for several theoretical and phenomenological reasons that we recall in these lecture notes. The various possible ways of modifying GR are presented, and we notably show that the motion of massive bodies may be changed even if one assumes that matter is minimally coupled to the metric as in GR. This is illustrated with the particular case of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, whose Fokker action is discussed, and we also mention the consequences of the no-hair theorem on the motion of black holes. The finite size of the bodies modifies their motion with respect to pointlike particles, and we give a simple argument showing that the corresponding effects are generically much larger in alternative theories than in GR. We also discuss possible modifications of Newtonian dynamics (MOND) at large distances, which have been proposed to avoid the dark matter hypothesis. We underline that all the previous classes of alternatives to GR may a priori be used to predict such a phenomenology, but that they generically involve several theoretical and experimental difficulties.