Existence of relativistic structures in $f(R,T)$ gravity

Abstract

In this paper, we study the impact of three different $f(R,T)$ models in the modeling of anisotropic relativistic stellar structures, where $R$ is the Ricci scalar and $T$ is the trace of the energy-momentum tensor. For this purpose, we assume static geometry of spherically symmetric self-gravitating object and after choosing appropriate vacuum solution, we evaluated some constraints for the smooth matching of exterior and interior geometries at the boundary surface. We considered observational values of three well-known stellar structures and checked the viability of energy conditions in the presence of quadratic, exponential and cubic $f(R,T)$ models. The distributions of energy density, behavior of anisotropic pressure, role of fundamental gravitational forces as well as stability investigation have been performed through plots in the realistic modeling of compact stars. We infer that modified gravitational theories could be treated as viable tool to study the existence of compact stellar structures at both theoretical and cosmological scales.