On the formation of heavy neutrino stars during a gravitational phase transition

In the framework of the Thomas-Fermi model at finite temperature, we show that a cooling non-degenerate gas of massive neutrinos will, at a certain temperature, undergo a phase transition in which quasi-degenerate supermassive neutrino stars are formed through gravitational collapse. For neutrinos in the mass range of 10 to 25 keV/c(2), these compact dark objects could mimic the role of supermassive black holes that are usually assumed to exist at the centres of galaxies and quasi-stellar objects.