Can higher order curvature theories explain rotation curves of galaxies?

Higher order curvature gravity has recently received a lot of attention due to the fact that it gives rise to cosmological models which seem capable of solving dark energy and quintessence issues without using ad hoc scalar fields. In this Letter, a gravitational potential is obtained which differs from the Newtonian one because of a repulsive correction increasing with distance. We evaluate the rotation curve of our Galaxy and compare it with the observed data in order both to test the viability of these theories and to estimate the scalelength of the correction. It is remarkable that the Milky Way rotation curve is well fitted without the need of any dark matter halo and a similar result tentatively holds also for other galaxies. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.