Related papers: Discovering the QCD Axion with Black Holes and Gra…

Black hole superradiance is a powerful probe of ultralight axions. If nature contains a boson with a mass of order $10^{-12}\,$eV, $\textit{mere vacuum fluctuations}$ will lead to its efficient production around spinning stellar mass black…

In the next few years Advanced LIGO (aLIGO) may see gravitational waves (GWs) from thousands of black hole (BH) mergers. This marks the beginning of a new precision tool for physics. Here we show how to search for new physics beyond the…

It has recently been suggested that the presence of a plenitude of light axions, an Axiverse, is evidence for the extra dimensions of string theory. We discuss the observational consequences of these axions on astrophysical black holes…

Gravitational waves from condensates of ultra-light particles, such as axion, around rotating black holes are a promising probe to search for unknown physics. For this purpose, we need to characterize the signal to detect the gravitational…

Ultralight scalar fields can experience runaway `superradiant' amplification near spinning black holes, resulting in a macroscopic `axion cloud' which slowly dissipates via continuous monochromatic gravitational waves. For a particular…

Axions, encompassing both QCD axions and axion-like particles, can generate loop-induced quadratic couplings to electromagnetic field strength tensors, resulting in oscillatory shifts of the fine-structure constant. Near a Kerr black hole,…

Electromagnetic observations of the radiation emitted by an accretion disk around a black hole, as well as gravitational wave observations of coalescing binaries, can be used to probe strong-field gravity. We here compare the constraints…

Gravitational waves provide a novel way to probe axions or axion-like particles coupled to a dark photon field, even in the absence of couplings to Standard Model particles. In the conventional misalignment mechanism, the generation of an…

Black holes in binaries with other compact objects can provide natural venues for indirect detection of axions or other ultralight fields. The superradiant instability associated with a rapidly spinning black hole leads to the creation of…

\textit{Superradiance} can trigger the formation of an ultra-light boson cloud around a spinning black hole. Once formed, the boson cloud is expected to emit a nearly periodic, long-duration, gravitational-wave signal. For boson masses in…

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) consists of two widely separated 4 km laser interferometers designed to detect gravitational waves from distant astrophysical sources in the frequency range from 10 Hz to 10…

Gravitational wave observations have recently revealed with high significance, and high precision, the existence of $\mathcal{O}(100) \, M_\odot$ rapidly rotating black holes, allowing gravitational wave events to be used for the first time…

Ultralight scalars, if they exist as theorized, could form clouds around rapidly rotating black holes. Such clouds are expected to emit continuous, quasimonochromatic gravitational waves that could be detected by LIGO and Virgo. Here we…

The detection of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo provides an opportunity to test general relativity in a regime that is inaccessible to traditional astronomical observations and laboratory tests. We present four…

The axion-gravity Chern-Simons coupling is well motivated but is relatively weakly constrained, partly due to difficult measurements of gravity. We study the sensitivity of LIGO measurements of chirping gravitational waves (GWs) on such…

We explore the prospects for Advanced LIGO to detect gravitational waves from neutron stars and stellar mass black holes spiraling into intermediate-mass ($M\sim 50 M_\odot$ to $350 M_\odot$) black holes. We estimate an event rate for such…

Motivated by possible existence of string axions with ultralight masses, we study gravitational radiation from an axion cloud around a rotating black hole (BH). The axion cloud extracts the rotation energy of the BH by superradiant…

Gravitational signatures of black hole superradiance are a unique probe of ultralight particles that are weakly-coupled to ordinary matter. The existence of an ultralight boson would lead spinning black holes with size comparable to the…

The process of superradiance can extract angular momentum and energy from astrophysical black holes (BHs) to populate gravitationally-bound states with an exponentially large number of light bosons. We analytically calculate superradiant…

Ultralight boson clouds can form around black holes in binaries through superradiance, and undergo resonant level transitions at certain orbit frequencies. In this work, we investigate the gravitational waves emitted by the clouds during…