Black hole ringdown spectroscopy of curvature-coupled scalar and pseudoscalar fields

Abstract

Remnant black holes formed in compact binary coalescences provide a clean setting for probing additional fields coupled to gravity. By analyzing the ringdown signals of the loudest LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA binary-black hole mergers, we search for massless curvature-coupled (pseudo)scalar fields arising in extensions to general relativity. We find no evidence for such fields and place 90\% credible upper limits on the coupling length scale, $\ell \lesssim (25$-$45)$ km, corresponding to scales significantly below the horizons of the remnant black holes. These results include the first gravitational-wave constraint on an axidilaton-type coupling. By isolating the ringdown phase and performing extensive robustness checks, our analysis provides a complementary observational probe to existing full-waveform constraints. As the gravitational-wave catalog expands, black hole ringdown spectroscopy will enable increasingly sensitive probes of gravity and additional fields using astrophysical black holes.

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