The imitation game (r)evolutions: $Q$-star effective shadow from GRMHD analysis

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Jaramillo, Víctor, Meneses, Laura, Sánchez, Héctor R. Olivares, Herdeiro, Carlos, Núñez, Darío, Zhou, Shuang-Yong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866917351025278976
author Jaramillo, Víctor
Meneses, Laura
Sánchez, Héctor R. Olivares
Herdeiro, Carlos
Núñez, Darío
Zhou, Shuang-Yong
author_facet Jaramillo, Víctor
Meneses, Laura
Sánchez, Héctor R. Olivares
Herdeiro, Carlos
Núñez, Darío
Zhou, Shuang-Yong
contents $Q$-stars are a class of boson stars arising in scalar-field theories with interacting potentials, minimally coupled to gravity. We show that, in certain regions of parameter space, the angular velocity of stable timelike circular geodesics around $Q$-stars can attain a maximum at a nonzero radius. Notably, this behaviour may occur for stable configurations. This feature has been argued to produce effective shadows, but so far it has only been investigated for unstable solutions. We test this possibility by performing general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic evolutions for a representative stable $Q$-star model. A low-density, low-luminosity central region is indeed observed to form and persist -- at least until the evolution becomes affected by numerical viscosity. As a proof of principle, this suggests that families of stable bosonic stars can act as black hole mimickers. Moreover, for the model at hand, a heuristic analysis shows that the effective shadow has a comparable size to that of a Schwarzschild black hole with the same mass. Importantly, this mechanism for generating an effective shadow does not rely on the object being ultracompact, or an ad hoc chosen accretion disk.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_16995
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The imitation game (r)evolutions: $Q$-star effective shadow from GRMHD analysis
Jaramillo, Víctor
Meneses, Laura
Sánchez, Héctor R. Olivares
Herdeiro, Carlos
Núñez, Darío
Zhou, Shuang-Yong
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
$Q$-stars are a class of boson stars arising in scalar-field theories with interacting potentials, minimally coupled to gravity. We show that, in certain regions of parameter space, the angular velocity of stable timelike circular geodesics around $Q$-stars can attain a maximum at a nonzero radius. Notably, this behaviour may occur for stable configurations. This feature has been argued to produce effective shadows, but so far it has only been investigated for unstable solutions. We test this possibility by performing general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic evolutions for a representative stable $Q$-star model. A low-density, low-luminosity central region is indeed observed to form and persist -- at least until the evolution becomes affected by numerical viscosity. As a proof of principle, this suggests that families of stable bosonic stars can act as black hole mimickers. Moreover, for the model at hand, a heuristic analysis shows that the effective shadow has a comparable size to that of a Schwarzschild black hole with the same mass. Importantly, this mechanism for generating an effective shadow does not rely on the object being ultracompact, or an ad hoc chosen accretion disk.
title The imitation game (r)evolutions: $Q$-star effective shadow from GRMHD analysis
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16995