I-Love-Q relations for gravastars and the approach to the black-hole limit

Abstract

The multipole moments and the tidal Love numbers of neutron stars and quark stars satisfy certain relations which are almost insensitive to the star's internal structure. A natural question is whether the same relations hold for different compact objects and how they possibly approach the black-hole limit. Here we consider "gravastars", which are hypothetical compact objects sustained by their internal vacuum energy. Such solutions have been proposed as exotic alternatives to the black-hole paradigm because they can be as compact as black holes and exist in any mass range. By constructing slowly-rotating, thin-shell gravastars to quadratic order in the spin, we compute the moment of inertia $I$, the mass quadrupole moment $Q$, and the tidal Love number $\lambda$ in exact form. The $I$-$\lambda$-$Q$ relations of a gravastar are dramatically different from those of an ordinary compact star, but the black-hole limit is continuous, i.e. these quantities approach their Kerr counterparts when the compactness is maximum. Therefore, such relations can be used to discern a gravastar from an ordinary compact star, but not to break the degeneracy with the black-hole case. Based on these results, we conjecture that the full multipolar structure and the tidal deformability of a spinning, ultracompact gravastar are identical to those of a Kerr black hole. The approach to the black-hole limit is nonpolynomial, thus differing from the critical behavior recently found for strongly anisotropic neutron stars.