Understand
The existence of static, spherically symmetric, self-gravitating scalar field solutions in the context of Born-Infeld gravity is explored.
- Upon a combination of analytical approximations and numerical methods, the equations for a free scalar field (without a potential term) are solved, verifying that the solutions recover the predictions of General Relativity far from the center but finding important new effects in the central regions.
- We find two classes of objects depending on the ratio between the Schwarzschild radius and a length scale associated to the Born-Infeld theory: massive solutions have a wormhole structure, with their throat at $r\approx 2M$, while for the lighter configurations the topology is Euclidean.
- The total energy density of these solutions exhibits a solitonic profile with a maximum peaked away from the center, and located at the throat whenever a wormhole exists.