1999/11/11 by Sergei Khlebnikov, S. Khlebnikov · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.62.043519
published as Phys.Rev. D62 (2000) 043519 · 16 pages, revtex, 4 figures
arxiv created 1999/11/11 · openalex publication_date 2000/07/26 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We numerically study the evolution of a self-gravitating nonequilibrium Bose gas contained in a fixed volume. We find that, even when the volume is small enough to prevent collisionless instability, a compact phase-correlated object (a Bose star) can form, by gravity alone, from a disordered initial state. We interpret this effect and the associated growth of the density contrast as consequences of a new type of gravitational instability---a nonlinear instability due to a stimulated gravitational scattering of the bosons. Our results imply that the formation of Bose stars, in regions that have fallen out of Hubble expansion, may be a quite general phenomenon, not requiring a large preexisting correlation length or any short-range interactions.