Constraints on Ultralight Scalar Bosons within Black Hole Spin Measurements from the LIGO-Virgo GWTC-2

Ken K.Y. Ng, Salvatore Vitale, Otto A. Hannuksela, Tjonnie G.F. Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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 disfavor the existence of scalar bosons in the mass range between 1.3×10^{-13} and 2.7×10^{-13}  eV. Our mass constraint is valid for bosons with negligible self-interaction, that is, with a decay constant f_{a}≳10^{14}  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 (∼10^{5}  yr) after the black holes formed.

Original languageEnglish
Article number151102
Pages (from-to)1-8
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume126
Issue number15
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Apr 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Juan Calderon Bustillo, Will Farr, Hartmut Grote, Max Isi, and Lilli Sun for valuable discussions and suggestions. K. K. Y. N. and S. V., members of the LIGO Laboratory, acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation through the NSF Grant No. PHY-1836814. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation and operates under Cooperative Agreement No. PHY-1764464. O. A. H. is supported by the research program of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). T. G. F. L. was partially supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Projects No. CUHK14306218, No. CUHK14310816, and No. CUHK24304317), Research Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Croucher Foundation in Hong Kong. The authors are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Lab and supported by the National Science Foundation Grants No. PHY-0757058 and No. PHY-0823459. This research has made use of data, software and/or web tools obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center , a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and the Virgo Collaboration.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Physical Society.

Funding

We thank Juan Calderon Bustillo, Will Farr, Hartmut Grote, Max Isi, and Lilli Sun for valuable discussions and suggestions. K. K. Y. N. and S. V., members of the LIGO Laboratory, acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation through the NSF Grant No. PHY-1836814. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation and operates under Cooperative Agreement No. PHY-1764464. O. A. H. is supported by the research program of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). T. G. F. L. was partially supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Projects No. CUHK14306218, No. CUHK14310816, and No. CUHK24304317), Research Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Croucher Foundation in Hong Kong. The authors are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Lab and supported by the National Science Foundation Grants No. PHY-0757058 and No. PHY-0823459. This research has made use of data, software and/or web tools obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center , a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and the Virgo Collaboration.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Constraints on Ultralight Scalar Bosons within Black Hole Spin Measurements from the LIGO-Virgo GWTC-2'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this