Newtonian Aspects of General Relativistic Galaxy Models

Many cosmological observations call for the existence of dark matter. The most direct evidence for dark matter is inferred from the measured flatness of galactic rotation curves. The latter is based on Newtonian gravity. Alternative approaches to the rotation curve problem by means of general relativity have recently been put forward. The class of models of interest is a subset of the axially symmetric and stationary solutions of Einstein’s equations with rotating dust. As a step toward the understanding of general relativistic galaxy models, we analyse rigidly as well as non-rigidly rotating (Post-)Newtonian spacetimes. We find that the Newtonian limit of the considered general relativistic galaxy model leads to Post-Newtonian terms in the metric.