Optical analogues of the Newton-Schr\"odinger equation and boson star evolution

Understand

Many gravitational phenomena that lie at the core of our understanding of the Universe have not yet been directly observed.

• An example in this sense is the boson star that has been proposed as an alternative to some compact objects currently interpreted as being black holes.
• In the weak field limit, these stars are governed by the Newton-Schrodinger equation (NSE).
• Here we present an optical system that, under appropriate conditions, identically reproduces the NSE in two dimensions.