2003/04/30 by A. W. Whinnett
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Neutron #Neutron star #Nuclear physics #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stars #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.68.024009
published as Phys.Rev. D68 (2003) 024009 · 15 pages, 2 figures. Added solutions with a more realistic equation of state. To be published in PRD
arxiv created 2003/05/21 · openalex publication_date 2003/07/03 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study neutron stars in a varying speed of light (VSL) theory of gravity in which the local speed of light depends upon the value of a scalar field \ensuremathφ. We find that the masses and radii of the stars are strongly dependent on the strength of the coupling between \ensuremathφ and the matter field and that for certain choices of coupling parameters, the maximum neutron star mass can be arbitrarily small. We also discuss the phenomenon of cosmological evolution of VSL stars (analogous to the gravitational evolution in scalar-tensor theories) and we derive a relation showing how the fractional change in the energy of a star is related to the change in the cosmological value of the scalar field.