• Editors' Suggestion

Dense Axion Stars

Eric Braaten, Abhishek Mohapatra, and Hong Zhang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 121801 – Published 16 September 2016

Abstract

If the dark matter particles are axions, gravity can cause them to coalesce into axion stars, which are stable gravitationally bound systems of axions. In the previously known solutions for axion stars, gravity and the attractive force between pairs of axions are balanced by the kinetic pressure. The mass of these dilute axion stars cannot exceed a critical mass, which is about 1014M if the axion mass is 104eV. We study axion stars using a simple approximation to the effective potential of the nonrelativistic effective field theory for axions. We find a new branch of dense axion stars in which gravity is balanced by the mean-field pressure of the axion Bose-Einstein condensate. The mass on this branch ranges from about 1020M to about M. If a dilute axion star with the critical mass accretes additional axions and collapses, it could produce a bosenova, leaving a dense axion star as the remnant.

  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Received 8 December 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.121801

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particles & FieldsGravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

Authors & Affiliations

Eric Braaten*, Abhishek Mohapatra, and Hong Zhang

  • Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA

  • *braaten@mps.ohio-state.edu
  • mohapatra.16@buckeyemail.osu.edu
  • zhang.5676@osu.edu

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Issue

Vol. 117, Iss. 12 — 16 September 2016

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