New insights into the formation and growth of boson stars in dark matter halos

This work studies the formation and growth of boson stars and their surrounding miniclusters by gravitational condensation using nonlinear dynamical numerical methods. Fully dynamical attractive and repulsive self-interactions are also considered for the first time. In the case of pure gravity, we numerically prove that the growth of boson stars inside halos slows down and saturates as has been previously conjectured, and detail its conditions. Self-interactions are included using the Gross-Pitaevskii-Poisson equations. We find that in the case of strong attractive self-interactions the boson stars can become unstable and collapse, in agreement with previous stationary computations. At even stronger coupling, the condensate fragments. Repulsive self-interactions, as expected, promote boson star formation, and lead to solutions with larger radii.

Automated summary

This study investigates the formation and growth of boson stars and their surrounding miniclusters through gravitational condensation using nonlinear dynamical numerical methods, considering attractive and repulsive self-interactions. Strong attractive self-interactions can cause instability and collapse of boson stars, while repulsive self-interactions promote their formation and result in solutions with larger radii.