Nonrelativistic isothermal fluid in the presence of a chameleon scalar field: Static and collapsing configurations

Abstract

We consider a gravitating spherically symmetric nonrelativistic configuration consisting of a massless chameleon scalar field nonminimally coupled to a perfect isothermal fluid. The object of this paper is to show the influence of the chameleon scalar field on the structure and evolution of an isothermal sphere. For this system we find static, singular and regular solutions depending on the form of the coupling function. A preliminary stability analysis indicates that both stable and unstable solutions exist. For unstable configurations, by choosing the special form of the coupling function, we consider the problem of the gravitational collapse by applying the similarity method.