Dynamical Boson Stars

TL;DR

This paper reviews the concept of boson stars, their theoretical development, dynamic properties, and diverse applications in astrophysics and higher-dimensional models, highlighting recent research advances.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of various types of boson stars, their dynamics, and their roles in current theoretical and observational contexts.

Findings

Boson stars can mimic black holes in certain models.

Different varieties of boson stars exhibit unique stability and dynamic behaviors.

Recent studies have expanded understanding of boson stars in higher-dimensional theories.

Abstract

The idea of stable, localized bundles of energy has strong appeal as a model for particles. In the 1950s John Wheeler envisioned such bundles as smooth configurations of electromagnetic energy that he called {\em geons}, but none were found. Instead, particle-like solutions were found in the late 1960s with the addition of a scalar field, and these were given the name {\em boson stars}. Since then, boson stars find use in a wide variety of models as sources of dark matter, as black hole mimickers, in simple models of binary systems, and as a tool in finding black holes in higher dimensions with only a single killing vector. We discuss important varieties of boson stars, their dynamic properties, and some of their uses, concentrating on recent efforts.