We present a detailed, fully nonlinear study of binary systems involving one black hole and one boson star, considering the effects of both a quartic self-interaction and a solitonic potential for the scalar field. First, we show the importance of using initial data for which the boson star is in an equilibrated configuration to obtain accurate gravitational waveforms, and discuss methods to further improve constraint violations in the initial data. We then present a series of head-on collisions, showing that even in this simplified scenario the radiative efficiency varies significantly with the scalar potential chosen. In addition to this, we present a preliminary study of inspiral configurations, showing that an appropriate scalar self-interaction can suppress tidal disruption. We comment throughout on implications for attempts to build model-agnostic waveform template banks for exotic compact objects.
@article{arxiv.2604.06312,
title = {Black Hole-Boson Star Binaries: Gravitational Wave Signals and Tidal Disruption},
author = {Gareth Arturo Marks and Seppe J. Staelens and Ulrich Sperhake},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.06312},
year = {2026}
}