Testing solitonic boson star interpretations of Sagittarius A* with near-infrared flare astrometry

TL;DR

This study uses near-infrared flare astrometry data to test if Sagittarius A* could be a solitonic boson star, analyzing model fits and imaging properties to constrain such interpretations.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of solitonic boson star models with high-precision astrometric data of Sagittarius A* using advanced fitting methods.

Findings

Boson star models yield higher mass estimates than the known value.

More diffusive boson stars resemble black holes more closely in imaging.

Results strongly constrain but do not exclude boson star interpretations.

Abstract

We use GRAVITY near-infrared (NIR) flare astrometry to test whether Sagittarius A* could be a solitonic boson star. We consider five spherically symmetric solitonic boson-star models with different effective radii, together with the Schwarzschild black hole. Treating the flares as hot spots on circular equatorial orbits, we analyze their centroid motions and images in these spacetimes and use them for parameter fitting. We perform the fitting using both $\chi^2$ analysis and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, which yield consistent results: the inferred masses of boson-star models are systematically larger than the established value of $4.3\times10^6M_\odot$. Notably, more diffusive boson stars exhibit imaging properties closer to those of a black hole, leading to mass estimates that are correspondingly closer to the established value. Overall, our results place stringent constraints on solitonic boson star interpretations of Sagittarius A*, although do not completely rule them out.