1998/01/19 by Eckehard W. Mielke, Franz E. Schunck
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc
published as Report of parallel session chair in: Proc. 8th M. Grossmann Meeting, T. Piran (ed.), World Scientific, Singapore 1998, to be published · 20 pages, 1 Postscript figure, LaTeX, uses mprocl.sty
arxiv created 1998/01/19 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
Boson stars are descendants of the so-called geons of Wheeler, except that they are built from scalar particles instead of electromagnetic fields. If scalar fields exist in nature, such localized configurations kept together by their self-generated gravitational field can form within Einstein's general relativity. In the case of complex scalar fields, an absolutely stable branch of such non-topological solitons with conserved particle number exists. Our present surge stems from the speculative possibility that these compact objects could provide a considerable fraction of the non-baryonic part of dark matter. In any case, they may serve as a convenient "laboratory" for studying numerically rapidly rotating bodies in general relativity and the generation of gravitational waves.