Periodic Gravitational Lensing with Oscillating Boson Stars

Abstract

We show that oscillating (real-scalar) boson stars generically host an \emph{oscillating radial caustic}. Sources near this caustic cross it every half period, thereby producing periodic caustic-crossing lensing. The resulting observables are phase locked to the lens oscillation: image-pair creation or annihilation, changing image morphology, achromatic photometric spikes, and astrometric motion. This signal provides a distinctive target for time-domain astronomy, and its detection would reveal an intrinsically time-dependent compact dark-sector object. Event-number estimates indicate a measurable discovery space with current astrometric and high-cadence photometric surveys, while null searches would constrain the abundance of such objects as dark matter. The predictions rely only on the dynamics of real-scalar condensates and extend naturally to self-interacting real scalars, including axionlike particles, and to ultralight vector bosons.

Comments: 10 pages, published version