Gravitational Condensate Stars: An Alternative to Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper introduces gravitational condensate stars as a stable, horizonless alternative to black holes, featuring a de Sitter interior and a phase boundary, resolving issues like singularities and the information paradox.

Contribution

It proposes a novel gravitational collapse endpoint modeled as a Bose-Einstein condensate with a de Sitter interior, avoiding horizons and singularities, and providing a thermodynamically stable alternative to black holes.

Findings

No singularities or event horizons in the solution

The object is thermodynamically stable

Entropy is given by the shell's hydrodynamic entropy

Abstract

A new solution for the endpoint of gravitational collapse is proposed. By extending the concept of Bose-Einstein condensation to gravitational systems, a cold, compact object with an interior de Sitter condensate phase and an exterior Schwarzschild geometry of arbitrary total mass M is constructed. These are separated by a phase boundary with a small but finite thickness of fluid with eq. of state p= +rho, replacing both the Schwarzschild and de Sitter classical horizons. The new solution has no singularities, no event horizons, and a global time. Its entropy is maximized under small fluctuations and is given by the standard hydrodynamic entropy of the thin shell, instead of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Unlike black holes, a collapsed star of this kind is thermodynamically stable and has no information paradox.