Probing vector gravitational atoms with eccentric intermediate mass-ratio inspirals
arXiv:2411.17247 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.111.083011
Abstract
Ultralight bosons, proposed as candidates for dark matter (DM), are predicted by various new physics models. In the presence of bosons with suitable masses, superradiant (SR) instability can naturally transform a spinning black hole (BH) into a gravitational atom (GA). Here we study the dynamics of intermediate mass-ratio inspirals (IMRIs) around a GA formed by ultralight vector field saturated in its SR ground state. We employ a perturbative model at the leading Newtonian order to consistently account for both the conservative effect of cloud gravity and the dissipative effect of cloud ionization. We find the cloud can make a sizable negative contribution to the secular periastron precession at binary separations comparable to the gravitational Bohr radius. Meanwhile, the backreaction of ionization could significantly accelerate the process of orbital decay and circularization. Considering reasonably small vector boson masses, we examine the adiabatic orbital evolution and gravitational waveforms of eccentric inspirals. The results indicate that vector GAs might be detectable through observations of low-frequency IMRIs by the future space-based gravitational-wave detectors, such as LISA and Taiji.
29 pages, 15 figures
References in corpus (20)
- Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter
- Can environmental effects spoil precision gravitational-wave astrophysics?
- Instability of the massive Klein-Gordon field on the Kerr spacetime
- Black holes as particle detectors: evolution of superradiant instabilities
- Dark Photon Dark Matter from a Network of Cosmic Strings
- The response of ultralight dark matter to supermassive black holes and binaries
- Ultralight boson cloud depletion in binary systems
- Gravitational wave signatures of ultralight vector bosons from black hole superradiance
- Orbital fingerprints of ultralight scalar fields around black holes
- Dynamical friction of black holes in ultralight dark matter
- Tidal deformability of dressed black holes and tests of ultralight bosons in extended mass ranges
- Circularization vs. Eccentrification in Intermediate Mass Ratio Inspirals inside Dark Matter Spikes
- Black holes surrounded by generic matter distributions: polar perturbations and energy flux
- Axion cloud evaporation during inspiral of black hole binaries -- the effects of backreaction and radiation
- Evolution of binary systems accompanying axion clouds in extreme mass ratio inspirals
- Effective field theory for black holes with induced scalar charges
- Detecting Ultralight Dark Matter Gravitationally with Laser Interferometers in Space
- Self-Gravity Effects of Ultralight Boson Clouds Formed by Black Hole Superradiance
- Tidal Love numbers of gravitational atoms
- Dark Photon Dark Matter and Low-Frequency Gravitational Wave Detection with Gaia-like Astrometry