Related papers: Common Envelope Evolution of Ultralight Boson Clou…
Ultra-light particles, such as axions, form a macroscopic condensate around a highly spinning black hole by the superradiant instability. Due to its macroscopic nature, the condensate opens the possibility of detecting the axion through…
Superradiance is a process by which massive bosonic particles can extract energy from spinning black holes, leading to the build up of a "cloud" if the particle has a Compton wavelength comparable to the black hole's Schwarzschild radius.…
Black holes can amplify incoming bosonic waves via rotational superradiance, inducing bound states of ultralight bosons around them. This phenomenon has the potential to confine the parameter spaces of new bosons. Axions and axion-like…
We describe some key astrophysical processes driving the formation and evolution of black hole binaries of different nature, from stellar-mass to supermassive systems. In the first part, we focus on the mainstream channels proposed for the…
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…
The existence of light, fundamental bosonic fields is an attractive possibility that can be tested via black hole observations. We study the effect of a tidal field -- caused by a companion star or black hole -- on the evolution of…
Mixing between ultralight bosons and the Standard Model photon may allow access to the hitherto invisible Universe. In the presence of plasma, photons are dressed with an effective mass which will influence the conversion between the two.…
During a common envelope episode in a binary system, the engulfed companion spirals to tighter orbital separations under the influence of drag from the surrounding envelope material. As this object sweeps through material with a steep…
Massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) represent an unavoidable outcome of hierarchical galaxy formation, but their dynamical evolution at sub-parsec scales is poorly understood, due to a combination of uncertainties in theoretical models and…
The discovery via gravitational waves of binary black hole systems with total masses greater than $60M_\odot$ has raised interesting questions for stellar evolution theory. Among the most promising formation channels for these systems is…
Boson stars, hypothetical astrophysical objects bound by the self-gravity of a scalar field, have been widely studied as a type of exotic compact object that is horizonless and provides a testing ground for physics beyond the Standard…
We extend our previous studies of head-on collisions of boson stars by considering orbiting binary boson stars. We concentrate on equal mass binaries and study the dynamical behavior of boson/boson and boson/antiboson pairs. We examine the…
The dense molecular cloud cores that form stars, like other self-gravitating objects, undergo bulk oscillations. Just at the point of gravitational instability, their fundamental oscillation mode has zero frequency. We study, using…
Ultralight bosons are possible fundamental building blocks of nature, and promising dark matter candidates. They can trigger superradiant instabilities of spinning black holes (BHs) and form long-lived "bosonic clouds" that slowly dissipate…
In currently favoured hierarchical cosmologies, the formation of massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) following galaxy mergers is unavoidable. Still, due the complex physics governing the (hydro)dynamics of the post-merger dense environment…
We present the to-date largest parameter space exploration of binaries in circumbinary disks (CBDs), deriving orbital evolution prescriptions for eccentric, unequal mass binaries from our suite of hydrodynamic simulations. In all cases,…
We present three-dimensional local hydrodynamic simulations of flows around objects embedded within stellar envelopes using a "wind tunnel" formalism. Our simulations model the common envelope dynamical inspiral phase in binary star systems…
Binary black holes occupy a special place in our quest for understanding the evolution of galaxies along cosmic history. If massive black holes grow at the center of (pre-)galactic structures that experience a sequence of merger episodes,…
Ultralight scalars emerge naturally in several motivated particle physics scenarios and are viable candidates for dark matter. While laboratory detection of such bosons is challenging, their existence in nature can be imprinted on…
This paper explores how time-varying increases in mass accretion onto rapidly spinning black holes influence their long-term spin evolution when affected by superradiance - a process where energy is extracted from the black hole by a…