Incompressible relativistic spheres: Electrically charged stars, compactness bounds, and quasiblack hole configurations

Abstract

We investigate the properties of relativistic star spheres made of an electrically charged incompressible fluid, generalizing, thus, the Schwarzschild interior solution. The investigation is carried by integrating numerically the hydrostatic equilibrium equation, i.e., the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) equation, with the hypothesis that the charge distribution is proportional to the energy density. We match the interior to a Reissner-Nordström exterior, and study some features of these star spheres such as the total mass $M$, the radius $R$, and the total charge $Q$. We also display the pressure profile. For star spheres made of a perfect fluid there is the Buchdahl bound, $R/M\geq 9/4$, a compactness bound found from generic principles. For the Schwarzschild interior solution there is also the known compactness limit, the interior Schwarzschild limit where the configurations attain infinite central pressure, given by $R/M=9/4$, yielding an instance where the Buchdahl bound is saturated. We study this limit of infinite central pressure for the electrically charged stars and compare it with the Buchdahl-Andréasson bound, a limit that, like the Buchdahl bound for the uncharged case, is obtained by imposing some generic physical conditions on charged configurations. We show that the electrical interior Schwarzschild limit of all but two configurations is always below the Buchdahl-Andréasson limit, i.e., we find that the electrical interior Schwarzschild limit does not generically saturate the Buchdahl-Andréasson bound. We also find that the quasiblack hole limit, i.e., the extremal most compact limit for charged incompressible stars, is reached when the matter is highly charged and the star's central pressure tends to infinity. This is one of the two instances where the Buchdahl-Andréasson bound is saturated, the other being the uncharged, interior Schwarzschild solution.