No Arabic abstract
Spinning bosonic stars (SBSs) can form from the gravitational collapse of a dilute cloud of scalar/Proca particles with non-zero angular momentum. In a recent work we found that the scalar stars are transient due to a non-axisymmetric instability which triggers the loss of angular momentum. We further study the dynamical formation of SBSs using 3-dimensional numerical-relativity simulations of the Einstein-(massive, complex)Klein-Gordon system and of the Einstein-(complex)Proca system. We incorporate a quartic self-interaction potential in the scalar case to gauge its effect on the instability; we investigate (m=2) Proca stars to assess their stability; we attempt to relate the instability of SBSs to the growth rate of azimuthal density modes and the existence of a corotation point. We show that: the self-interaction potential can only delay the instability in scalar SBSs; m=2 Proca stars always migrate to the stable m=1 spheroidal family; unstable m=2 Proca stars and m=1 scalar boson stars exhibit a corotation point. This establishes a parallelism with rotating neutron stars affected by dynamical bar-mode instabilities. We compute the gravitational waves (GWs) emitted and investigate the detectability of the waveforms comparing the characteristic strain of the signal with the sensitivity curves of a variety of detectors, computing the signal-to-noise ratio. By assuming that the characteristic damping timescale of the bar-like deformation in SBSs is only set by GWs emission and not by viscosity (unlike in neutron stars), we find that the post-collapse emission could be orders of magnitude more energetic than that of the bar-mode instability itself. Our results indicate that GW observations of SBSs might be within the reach of future experiments, offering a potential means to establish the existence of such stars and to place tight constraints on the mass of the bosonic particle.
We present results on the effect of the stiffness of the equation of state on the dynamical bar-mode instability in rapidly rotating polytropic models of neutron stars in full General Relativity. We determine the change in the threshold for the emergence of the instability for a range of the adiabatic $Gamma$ index from 2.0 to 3.0, including two values chosen to mimic more realistic equations of state at high densities.
We perform numerical evolutions of the fully non-linear Einstein-(complex, massive)Klein-Gordon and Einstein-(complex)Proca systems, to assess the formation and stability of spinning bosonic stars. In the scalar/vector case these are known as boson/Proca stars. Firstly, we consider the formation scenario. Starting with constraint-obeying initial data, describing a dilute, axisymmetric cloud of spinning scalar/Proca field, gravitational collapse towards a spinning star occurs, via gravitational cooling. In the scalar case the formation is transient, even for a non-perturbed initial cloud; a non-axisymmetric instability always develops ejecting all the angular momentum from the scalar star. In the Proca case, by contrast, no instability is observed and the evolutions are compatible with the formation of a spinning Proca star. Secondly, we address the stability of an existing star, a stationary solution of the field equations. In the scalar case, a non-axisymmetric perturbation develops collapsing the star to a spinning black hole. No such instability is found in the Proca case, where the star survives large amplitude perturbations; moreover, some excited Proca stars decay to, and remain as, fundamental states. Our analysis suggests bosonic stars have different stability properties in the scalar/vector case, which we tentatively relate to their toroidal/spheroidal morphology. A parallelism with instabilities of spinning fluid stars is briefly discussed.
We study the dynamical evolution of a large amplitude r-mode by numerical simulations. R-modes in neutron stars are unstable growing modes, driven by gravitational radiation reaction. In these simulations, r-modes of amplitude unity or above are destroyed by a catastrophic decay: A large amplitude r-mode gradually leaks energy into other fluid modes, which in turn act nonlinearly with the r-mode, leading to the onset of the rapid decay. As a result the r-mode suddenly breaks down into a differentially rotating configuration. The catastrophic decay does not appear to be related to shock waves at the stars surface. The limit it imposes on the r-mode amplitude is significantly smaller than that suggested by previous fully nonlinear numerical simulations.
We present accurate simulations of the dynamical bar-mode instability in full General Relativity focussing on two aspects which have not been investigated in detail in the past. Namely, on the persistence of the bar deformation once the instability has reached its saturation and on the precise determination of the threshold for the onset of the instability in terms of the parameter $beta={T}/{|W|}$. We find that generic nonlinear mode-coupling effects appear during the development of the instability and these can severely limit the persistence of the bar deformation and eventually suppress the instability. In addition, we observe the dynamics of the instability to be strongly influenced by the value $beta$ and on its separation from the critical value $beta_c$ marking the onset of the instability. We discuss the impact these results have on the detection of gravitational waves from this process and provide evidence that the classical perturbative analysis of the bar-mode instability for Newtonian and incompressible Maclaurin spheroids remains qualitatively valid and accurate also in full General Relativity.
We model the nonlinear saturation of the r-mode instability via three-mode couplings and the effects of the instability on the spin evolution of young neutron stars. We include one mode triplet consisting of the r-mode and two near resonant inertial modes that couple to it. We find that the spectrum of evolutions is more diverse than previously thought. The evolution of the star is dynamic and initially dominated by fast neutrino cooling. Nonlinear effects become important when the r-mode amplitude grows above its first parametric instability threshold. The balance between neutrino cooling and viscous heating plays an important role in the evolution. Depending on the initial r-mode amplitude, and on the strength of the viscosity and of the cooling this balance can occur at different temperatures. If thermal equilibrium occurs on the r-mode stability curve, where gravitational driving equals viscous damping, the evolution may be adequately described by a one-mode model. Otherwise, nonlinear effects are important and lead to various more complicated scenarios. Once thermal balance occurs, the star spins-down oscillating between thermal equilibrium states until the instability is no longer active. For lower viscosity we observe runaway behavior in which the r-mode amplitude passes several parametric instability thresholds. In this case more modes need to be included to model the evolution accurately. In the most optimistic case, we find that gravitational radiation from the r-mode instability in a very young, fast spinning neutron star within about 1 Mpc of Earth may be detectable by advanced LIGO for years, and perhaps decades, after formation. Details regarding the amplitude and duration of the emission depend on the internal dissipation of the modes of the star, which would be probed by such detections.