Frozen stars: Black hole mimickers sourced by a string fluid

Abstract

The frozen star is a non-singular, ultracompact object that, to an external observer, looks exactly like a Schwarzschild black hole, but with a different interior geometry and matter composition. The frozen star needs to be sourced by an extremely anisotropic fluid, for which the sum of the radial pressure and energy density is either vanishing or perturbatively small. Here, we show that this matter can be identified with the string fluid resulting from the decay of an unstable $D$-brane or a brane-antibrane system at the end of open-string tachyon condensation. The string fluid corresponds to flux tubes emanating from the center and ending at the Schwarzschild radius of the star. The effective Lagrangian for this fluid can be recast into a Born-Infeld form. When the fluid Lagrangian is coupled to that of Einstein's Gravity, the static, spherically symmetric solutions of the equations of motion are shown to be the same as those describing the frozen star model. Frozen stars can therefore be viewed as gravitationally back-reacted BIons. The Born-Infeld Lagrangian provides a complete set of equations that describe the dynamics of the frozen star in a generic state, which is not necessarily static nor spherically symmetric. Additionally, this description provides a new physical perspective on the structure of the frozen star in terms of the corresponding electric fields and charges. The electric field is sourced by a point-like charge at the center of the star, while its outer layer is equal and oppositely charged. The electric force between the charges is offset because the mass of the star is fixed.