Black Hole Superradiance Signatures of Ultralight Vectors

Abstract

The process of superradiance can extract angular momentum and energy from astrophysical black holes (BHs) to populate gravitationally-bound states with an exponentially large number of light bosons. We analytically calculate superradiant growth rates for vectors around rotating BHs in the regime where the vector Compton wavelength is much larger than the BH size. Spin-1 bound states have superradiance times as short as a second around stellar BHs, growing up to a thou- sand times faster than their spin-0 counterparts. The fast rates allow us to use measurements of rapidly spinning BHs in X-ray binaries to exclude a wide range of masses for weakly-coupled spin-1 particles, $5\times 10^{-14}-2\times 10^{-11}$ eV; lighter masses in the range $6\times 10^{-20}-2\times 10^{-17}$ eV start to be constrained by supermassive BH spin measurements at a lower level of confidence. We also explore routes to detection of new vector particles possible with the advent of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy. The LIGO-Virgo collaboration could discover hints of a new light vector particle in statistical analyses of masses and spins of merging BHs. Vector annihilations source continuous monochromatic gravitational radiation which could be observed by current GW observatories. At design sensitivity, Advanced LIGO may measure up to thousands of annihilation signals from within the Milky Way, while hundreds of BHs born in binary mergers across the observable universe may superradiate vector bound states and become new beacons of monochromatic gravitational waves.

16 pages + appendices, 12 figures; matches version published in PRD

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