Gravitational confinement of ghost scalar fields in neutron stars

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bernal, Argelia, Jaramillo, Víctor, Montiel-Hernández, Néstor A., Núñez, Darío, Sanchis-Gual, Nicolas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Bernal, Argelia
Jaramillo, Víctor
Montiel-Hernández, Néstor A.
Núñez, Darío
Sanchis-Gual, Nicolas
author_facet Bernal, Argelia
Jaramillo, Víctor
Montiel-Hernández, Néstor A.
Núñez, Darío
Sanchis-Gual, Nicolas
contents We investigate the effects, stability, and nonlinear dynamics of ghost scalar matter modeled as a field with a negative kinetic term confined within the cores of neutron stars. To this end, we analyze static configurations of the coupled Einstein-Euler-(ghost, complex) Klein-Gordon system and then we perform fully dynamical numerical evolutions of illustrative cases. Our results demonstrate that neutron stars can gravitationally confine a finite amount of ghost matter and support continuous families of equilibrium solutions, indicating that these configurations are not the result of fine tuning. We analyze the properties of the final states and find that the neutron star undergoes a persistent pulse-like oscillatory motion. In particular, we explicitly compute the frequency synchronization between the stellar fluid oscillation modes and those of the ghost scalar sector.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_04400
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Gravitational confinement of ghost scalar fields in neutron stars
Bernal, Argelia
Jaramillo, Víctor
Montiel-Hernández, Néstor A.
Núñez, Darío
Sanchis-Gual, Nicolas
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
We investigate the effects, stability, and nonlinear dynamics of ghost scalar matter modeled as a field with a negative kinetic term confined within the cores of neutron stars. To this end, we analyze static configurations of the coupled Einstein-Euler-(ghost, complex) Klein-Gordon system and then we perform fully dynamical numerical evolutions of illustrative cases. Our results demonstrate that neutron stars can gravitationally confine a finite amount of ghost matter and support continuous families of equilibrium solutions, indicating that these configurations are not the result of fine tuning. We analyze the properties of the final states and find that the neutron star undergoes a persistent pulse-like oscillatory motion. In particular, we explicitly compute the frequency synchronization between the stellar fluid oscillation modes and those of the ghost scalar sector.
title Gravitational confinement of ghost scalar fields in neutron stars
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.04400