Abstract: | We are concerned with the study of the Cauchy problem for the Navier–Stokes–Poisson system in the critical regularity framework. In the case of a repulsive potential, we first establish the unique global solvability in any dimension for small perturbations of a linearly stable constant state. Next, under a suitable additional condition involving only the low frequencies of the data and in the L2‐critical framework (for simplicity), we exhibit optimal decay estimates for the constructed global solutions, which are similar to those of the barotropic compressible Navier–Stokes system. Our results rely on new a priori estimates for the linearized Navier–Stokes–Poisson system about a stable constant equilibrium, and on a refined time‐weighted energy functional. |