Haloes of k-Essence

Abstract

We study gravitationally bound static and spherically symmetric configurations of k-essence fields. In particular, we investigate whether these configurations can reproduce the properties of dark matter haloes. The classes of Lagrangians we consider lead to non-isotropic fluids with barotropic and polytropic equations of state. The latter include microscopic realizations of the often-considered Chaplygin gases, which we find can cluster into dark matter halo-like objects with flat rotation curves, while exhibiting a dark energy-like negative pressure on cosmological scales. We complement our studies with a series of formal general results about the stability and initial value formulation of non-canonical scalar field theories, and we also discuss a new class of de Sitter solutions with spacelike field gradients.