English

Structure of neutron stars in massive scalar-tensor gravity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2021-05-21 v3 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We compute families of spherically symmetric neutron-star models in two-derivative scalar-tensor theories of gravity with a massive scalar field. The numerical approach we present allows us to compute the resulting spacetimes out to infinite radius using a relaxation algorithm on a compactified grid. We discuss the structure of the weakly and strongly scalarized branches of neutron-star models thus obtained and their dependence on the linear and quadratic coupling parameters α0\alpha_0, β0\beta_0 between the scalar and tensor sectors of the theory, as well as the scalar mass μ\mu. For highly negative values of β0\beta_0, we encounter configurations resembling a "gravitational atom", consisting of a highly compact baryon star surrounded by a scalar cloud. A stability analysis based on binding-energ calculations suggests that these configurations are unstable and we expect them to migrate to models with radially decreasing baryon density {\it and} scalar field strength.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.14429,
  title  = {Structure of neutron stars in massive scalar-tensor gravity},
  author = {Roxana Rosca-Mead and Christopher J. Moore and Ulrich Sperhake and Michalis Agathos and Davide Gerosa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.14429},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Corrected Eq.(6)