New insights into the formation and growth of boson stars in dark matter halos

This paper studies the formation and growth of boson stars via gravitational condensation, using non-linear numerical techniques, incorporating, for the first time, fully dynamical repulsive and attractive self-interactions. For strong attraction, the boson star becomes unstable and ultimately breaks up for very strong coupling. Repulsion encourages boson star formation, whilst, in the case of pure gravity, the growth of boson stars in haloes slows down as per expectations.