BRANEWORLDS AND DARK MATTER

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.