Relaxation times for Bose-Einstein condensation by self-interaction and gravity

Abstract

In this paper, we study the Bose-Einstein condensation of a scalar field with an attractive self-interaction, with or without gravitational interactions. We confirm through full dynamical simulation that the condensation timescale due to self-interaction is inversely proportional to the square of the number density $n$ and the self-coupling constant $g:\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\propto}{n}^{\ensuremath{-}2}{g}^{\ensuremath{-}2}$. We also investigate the condensation timescale when self-interaction and gravity are both important by solving the Gross-Pitaevskii-Poisson equations, and find that the condensation time scales according to an additive model for the cross section. We discuss the relevance of our results to theoretical models of boson star formation by condensation.