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Publications
- Title
- Periodic Gravitational Lensing with Oscillating Boson Stars
- KIAS Author
- Yang, Xing-Yu
- Journal
- PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 2026
- Archive
-
2511.19606
- Abstract
- We show that oscillating (real-scalar) boson stars generically host an 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.