Chameleon stars

Abstract

We consider a gravitating spherically symmetric configuration consisting of a scalar field non-minimally coupled to ordinary matter in the form of a perfect fluid. For this system we find static, regular, asymptotically flat solutions for both relativistic and non-relativistic cases. It is shown that the presence of the non-minimal interaction leads to substantial changes both in the radial matter distribution of the star and in the star's total mass. A simple stability test indicates that, for the choice of parameters used in the paper, the solutions are unstable.