arXiv:1512.00108hep-ph
Dense Axion Stars
Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.
Abstract
If the dark matter particles are axions, gravity can cause them to coalesce into axion stars, which are stable gravitationally bound systems of axions. In the previously known solutions for axion stars, gravity and the attractive force between pairs of axions are balanced by the kinetic pressure. The mass of these dilute axion stars cannot exceed a critical mass, which is about $10^{-14} M_\odot$ if the axion mass is $10^{-4}$~eV. We study axion stars using a simple approximation to the effective potential of the nonrelativistic effective field theory for axions. We find a new branch of dense axion stars in which gravity is balanced by the mean-field pressure of the axion Bose-Einstein condensate. The mass on this branch ranges from about $10^{-20} M_\odot$ to about $M_\odot$. If a dilute axion star with the critical mass accretes additional axions and collapses, it could produce a bosenova, leaving a dense axion star as the remnant.
First see footnote 1 of the first page of the preprint linked at the top. The authors are jumping the gun. That's fine for theorists, but bear in mind that they are literally in the dark on a number of telescopic observables, any of which would shoot down the idea in the…
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