Dynamical Collapse of Boson Stars

We study the time evolution in a system of N bosons with a relativistic dispersion law interacting through a Newtonian gravitational potential with coupling constant G. We consider the mean field scaling where N tends to infinity, G tends to zero and λ = GN remains fixed. We investigate the relation between the many body quantum dynamics governed by the Schrödinger equation and the effective evolution described by a (semi-relativistic) Hartree equation. In particular, we are interested in the super-critical regime of large λ [the sub-critical case has been studied in Elgart and Schlein (Comm Pure Appl Math 60(4):500-545, 2007) and Knowles and Pickl (Commun Math Phys 298(1):101-138, 2010)], where the nonlinear Hartree equation is known to have solutions which blow up in finite time. To inspect this regime, we need to regularize the interaction in the many body Hamiltonian with an N dependent cutoff that vanishes in the limit N → ∞. We show, first, that if the solution of the nonlinear equation does not blow up in the time interval [-T, T], then the many body Schrödinger dynamics (on the level of the reduced density matrices) can be approximated by the nonlinear Hartree dynamics, just as in the sub-critical regime. Moreover, we prove that if the solution of the nonlinear Hartree equation blows up at time T (in the sense that the H 1/2 norm of the solution diverges as time approaches T), then also the solution of the linear Schrödinger equation collapses (in the sense that the kinetic energy per particle diverges) if t → T and, simultaneously, N → ∞ sufficiently fast. This gives the first dynamical description of the phenomenon of gravitational collapse as observed directly on the many body level. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.