Proca stars in excited states

Abstract In this paper, we consider families of solutions for excited states of Proca stars in spherical symmetry. We focus on the first two excited configurations and perform a series of fully non-linear dynamical simulations in order to study their properties and stability. Our analysis reveals that excited Proca stars are always unstable against even very small perturbations, and their dynamical evolution can lead to three different final states: collapse to a black hole, dissipation, or migration to a different configuration in the ground state. We find that migration to the ground state can only occur in a small region of the parameter space of solutions with negative binding energy.