Imaging a boson star at the Galactic center

• Published in: Classical and quantum gravity Vol. 33; no. 10; pp. 105015 - 105033
• Main Authors: Vincent, F H, Meliani, Z, Grandclément, P, Gourgoulhon, E, Straub, O
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 19.05.2016
• Subjects: accretion disks; black holes; Black holes (astronomy); Bosons; Event horizon; Galaxies; Physics; Quantum gravity; relativistic processes; Sciences of the Universe; Shadows; Stars
• ISSN: 0264-9381; 1361-6382
• DOI: 10.1088/0264-9381/33/10/105015

Millimeter very long baseline interferometry will soon produce accurate images of the closest surroundings of the supermassive compact object at the center of the Galaxy, Sgr A*. These images may reveal the existence of a central faint region, the so-called shadow, which is often interpreted as the observable consequence of the event horizon of a black hole. In this paper, we compute images of an accretion torus around Sgr A* assuming this compact object is a boson star, i.e. an alternative to black holes within general relativity, with no event horizon and no hard surface. We show that very relativistic rotating boson stars produce images extremely similar to Kerr black holes, showing in particular shadow-like and photon-ring-like structures. This result highlights the extreme difficulty of unambiguously telling the existence of an event horizon from strong-field images.