Modified gravity and dark matter

The fundamental nature of Dark Matter (DM) has not been established. Indeed, beyond its gravitational effects, DM remains undetected by present experiments. In this situation, it is reasonable to wonder if other alternatives can effectively explain the observations usually associated with the existence of DM. The modification of the gravitational interaction has been studied in this context from many different approaches. However, the large amount of different astrophysical evidences makes difficult to think that modified gravity can account for all these observations. On the other hand, if such a modification introduces new degrees of freedom, they may work as DM candidates. We will summarize the phenomenology of these gravitational DM candidates by analyzing minimal models. (paper)