Tidal Love numbers of Proca stars

Abstract

Proca stars [1] are everywhere regular, asymptotically flat self-gravitating solitons composed of complex, massive vector bosons, forming a macroscopic, star-sized, Bose-Einstein condensate. They have been suggested as a classical, dynamical model of exotic compact objects, black hole mimickers and dark matter candidates. In spherical symmetry, they are qualitatively similar to their scalar cousins, the standard (scalar) boson stars in all respects studied so far. Here we study the tidal deformability and the quadrupolar tidal Love numbers, both electric-type and magnetic-type, of spherically symmetric Proca stars. The equations for the perturbations are derived and the numerical values of the Love numbers for some concrete background solutions are computed. We observe that both Love numbers are qualitatively similar to the ones of the scalar boson stars; in particular, the electric-type (magnetic-type) quadrupolar Love numbers are positive (negative) for Proca stars. Quantitatively, for the same compactness, the electric and magnetic Love numbers in the Proca case are closer (in magnitude) than in the scalar case, with the electric Love numbers having a slightly larger magnitude than the magnetic ones.