Constraints on ultralight scalar bosons within black hole spin measurements from LIGO-Virgo's GWTC-2

Abstract

Clouds of ultralight bosons - such as axions - can form around a rapidly spinning black hole, if the black hole radius is comparable to the bosons' wavelength. The cloud rapidly extracts angular momentum from the black hole, and reduces it to a characteristic value that depends on the boson's mass as well as on the black hole mass and spin. Therefore, a measurement of a black hole mass and spin can be used to reveal or exclude the existence of such bosons. Using the black holes released by LIGO and Virgo in their GWTC-2, we perform a simultaneous measurement of the black hole spin distribution at formation and the mass of the scalar boson. We find that the data strongly disfavors the existence of scalar bosons in the mass range between $1.3\times 10^{-13}\mathrm{eV}$ and $2.7\times 10^{-13}\mathrm{eV}$ for a decay constant $f_a\gtrsim 10^{14}\mathrm{GeV}$. The statistical evidence is mostly driven by the two {binary black holes} systems GW190412 and GW190517, which host rapidly spinning black holes. The region where bosons are excluded narrows down if these two systems merged shortly ($\sim 10^5$ years) after the black holes formed.

5 pages, 2 figures, matched PRL version

References in corpus (31)

• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Advanced LIGO
• Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter
• Cosmic Structure as the Quantum Interference of a Coherent Dark Wave
• Discovering the QCD Axion with Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
• Gravitational waves from scattering of stellar-mass black holes in galactic nuclei
• Instability of the massive Klein-Gordon field on the Kerr spacetime
• Searching for dilaton dark matter with atomic clocks
• Gravitational wave searches for ultralight bosons with LIGO and LISA
• First results from a microwave cavity axion search at 24 micro-eV
• Equivalence Principle Violations and Couplings of a Light Dilaton
• The Dynamical Evolution of Stellar Black Holes in Globular Clusters
• The LIGO Open Science Center
• Black holes as particle detectors: evolution of superradiant instabilities
• Dynamics of stellar black holes in young star clusters with different metallicities - II. Black hole-black hole binaries
• Searching for dark matter and variation of fundamental constants with laser and maser interferometry
• Stochastic and resolvable gravitational waves from ultralight bosons
• Ultra Light Boson Dark Matter and Event Horizon Telescope Observations of M87*
• Mergers of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in Nuclear Star Clusters
• Search for axion-like dark matter through nuclear spin precession in electric and magnetic fields
• Bosenova collapse of axion cloud around a rotating black hole
• Polluting the pair-instability mass gap for binary black holes through super-Eddington accretion in isolated binaries
• The response of ultralight dark matter to supermassive black holes and binaries
• A Search for Hidden Sector Photons with ADMX
• Ultralight boson cloud depletion in binary systems
• Gravitational wave signatures of ultralight vector bosons from black hole superradiance
• Binary black hole mergers in AGN accretion discs: gravitational wave rate density estimates
• A first search for a stochastic gravitational-wave background from ultralight bosons
• The Spectrum of the Axion Dark Sector
• Probing the string axiverse by gravitational waves from Cygnus X-1
• Superradiance and the Spins of Black Holes from LIGO and X-ray binaries

Cited by in corpus (47)

• Searches for Continuous-Wave Gravitational Radiation
• No-Hair Theorem in the Wake of Event Horizon Telescope
• Detection of Early-Universe Gravitational Wave Signatures and Fundamental Physics
• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Cover Your Basis: Comprehensive Data-Driven Characterization of the Binary Black Hole Population
• Brief Review of Recent Advances in Understanding Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• Dark photon superradiance: Electrodynamics and multimessenger signals
• SuperRad: Modeling the black hole superradiance gravitational waveform
• Termination of Superradiance from a Binary Companion
• Vortex String Formation in Black Hole Superradiance of a Dark Photon with the Higgs Mechanism
• Short Review of the main achievements of the Scalar Field, Fuzzy, Ultralight, Wave, BEC Dark Matter model
• Constraints on the ultralight scalar boson from Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo's first three observing runs using the stochastic gravitational-wave background
• GW241011 and GW241110: Exploring Binary Formation and Fundamental Physics with Asymmetric, High-Spin Black Hole Coalescence
• Constraining properties of asymmetric dark matter candidates from gravitational-wave observations
• Axion dark matter search using arm cavity transmitted beams of gravitational wave detectors
• Methods and prospects for gravitational wave searches targeting ultralight vector boson clouds around known black holes
• Instability and backreaction of massive spin-2 fields around black holes
• Searching for ultralight bosons with supermassive black hole ringdown
• Gravitational wave probes of particle dark matter: a review
• Observational prospects of self-interacting scalar superradiance with next-generation gravitational-wave detectors
• Constraining scalar-tensor theories using neutron star mass and radius measurements
• Superradiant energy extraction from rotating hairy Horndeski black holes
• Superradiant clouds may be relevant for close compact object binaries
• Self-Gravity Effects of Ultralight Boson Clouds Formed by Black Hole Superradiance
• Subdominant Modes of Scalar Superradiant Instability and Gravitational Wave Beats
• Getting More Out of Black Hole Superradiance: a Statistically Rigorous Approach to Ultralight Boson Constraints from Black Hole Spin Measurements
• Imprints of ultralight axions on the gravitational wave and pulsar timing measurement
• Search for continuous gravitational wave signals from luminous dark photon superradiance clouds with LVK O3 observations
• Next-to-leading-order solution to Kerr-Newman black hole superradiance
• Ultralight boson constraints from gravitational wave observations of spinning binary black holes
• Methodology for constraining ultralight vector bosons with gravitational wave searches targeting merger remnant black holes
• Self-interaction effects on the Kerr black hole superradiance and their observational implications
• Probing Self-Interacting Dark Matter via Gravitational-Wave Background from Eccentric Supermassive Black Hole Mergers
• Common Envelope Evolution of Ultralight Boson Clouds
• Evolution and detection of vector superradiant instabilities
• Scalar fields around black hole binaries in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
• Gravitational Waves from Superradiant Cloud Level Transition
• Exploring the viability of pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson as ultralight dark matter in a mass range relevant for strong gravity applications
• Limits on the existence of totally reflective exotic compact objects with current and future gravitational-wave detectors
• Constraining axion-gluon coupling in monohadron processes
• Co-interacting dark matter and conformally coupled light scalars
• Renormalization group analysis of superradiant growth of self-interacting axion cloud
• Ultralight Dark Matter from the Edge of Field Space
• Local Group Velocity Distribution inside Superradiant Condensates
• Distinguishing between dark-matter interactions with gravitational-wave detectors
• Trails of clouds in binary black holes
• Effect of accretion on scalar superradiant instability