Exploring physical features of anisotropic quark stars in Brans-Dicke theory with a massive scalar field via embedding approach

Abstract

Abstract The main aim of this manuscript is to explore the existence and salient features of spherically symmetric relativistic quark stars in the background of massive Brans-Dicke gravity. The exact solutions to the modified Einstein field equations are derived for specific forms of coupling and scalar field functions by using the equation of state relating to the strange quark matter that stimulates the phenomenological MIT-Bag model as a free Fermi gas of quarks. We use a well-behaved function along with Karmarkar condition for class-one embedding as well as junction conditions to determine the unknown metric tensors. The radii of the strange compact stars viz., PSR J1416-2230, PSR J1903+327, 4U 1820-30, CenX-3, EXO1785-248 are predicted via their observed mass for different values of the massive Brans-Dicke parameters. We explore the influences of mass of scalar field $m_{\phi}$ as well as coupling parameter $\omega_{BD}$ along with bag constant $\mathcal{B}$ on state determinants and perform several tests on the viability and stability of the constructed stellar model. Conclusively, we find that our stellar system is physically viable and stable as it satisfies all the energy conditions as well as necessary stability criteria under the influence of a gravitational scalar field.