A test of MOND and emergent gravity with SMACS J0723.3-7327 using eROSITA observations

Abstract We implement a test of MOND and Verlinde's Emergent Gravity using the galaxy cluster SMACS J0723-7327, which has been recently imaged using the eROSITA X-ray telescope as well as with JWST. We test MOND using two independent methods. The first method involves comparing the dynamical MOND mass and baryonic mass, while the second method entails a comparison of the MOND-estimated temperature with the observed temperature. We then compare the unseen mass predicted by Emergent Gravity with the estimated dark matter mass. We find that MOND shows a mass discrepancy in the central regions at high significance levels. The observed temperature profile is in marginal disagreement with that in the MOND paradigm. However, the Emergent Gravity Theory agrees in accurately accounting for the dynamical mass in the inner regions within 1 σ . Our results are qualitatively consistent with the earlier tests on other clusters.