Chaotic dynamics around astrophysical objects with nonisotropic stresses

TL;DR

This paper investigates chaotic behavior of test particle geodesics around astrophysical objects with intrinsic quadrupolar deformation, revealing chaos in oblate cases and suggesting broader astrophysical implications.

Contribution

It demonstrates that nonisotropic stresses induce chaos in oblate deformations, expanding understanding beyond previous prolate-focused studies.

Findings

Chaotic motion occurs for oblate deformations.

Chaos is linked to the presence of arbitrary deformation parameters.

Potential for chaotic dynamics in accretion disks around various astrophysical bodies.

Abstract

The existence of chaotic behavior for the geodesics of the test particles orbiting compact objects is a subject of much current research. Some years ago, Gu\'eron and Letelier [Phys. Rev. E \textbf{66}, 046611 (2002)] reported the existence of chaotic behavior for the geodesics of the test particles orbiting compact objects like black holes induced by specific values of the quadrupolar deformation of the source using as models the Erez--Rosen solution and the Kerr black hole deformed by an internal multipole term. In this work, we are interesting in the study of the dynamic behavior of geodesics around astrophysical objects with intrinsic quadrupolar deformation or nonisotropic stresses, which induces nonvanishing quadrupolar deformation for the nonrotating limit. For our purpose, we use the Tomimatsu-Sato spacetime [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{29} 1344 (1972)] and its arbitrary deformed generalization obtained as the particular vacuum case of the five parametric solution of Manko et al [Phys. Rev. D 62, 044048 (2000)], characterizing the geodesic dynamics throughout the Poincar\'e sections method. In contrast to the results by Gu\'eron and Letelier we find chaotic motion for oblate deformations instead of prolate deformations. It opens the possibility that the particles forming the accretion disk around a large variety of different astrophysical bodies (nonprolate, e.g., neutron stars) could exhibit chaotic dynamics. We also conjecture that the existence of an arbitrary deformation parameter is necessary for the existence of chaotic dynamics.