Constraining Ultralight Scalars with Black Hole Binary Mergers in Galactic Nuclei

@misc{khalaf2026constraining,
  title = {{Constraining Ultralight Scalars with Black Hole Binary Mergers in Galactic Nuclei}},
  author = {Majed Khalaf and Eric Kuflik and Alessandro Lenoci and Nicholas Chamberlain Stone and Ofri Telem},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.12052},
  eprint = {2609.12052},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12052},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Constraining Ultralight Scalars with Black Hole Binary Mergers in Galactic Nuclei
AU  - Majed Khalaf
AU  - Eric Kuflik
AU  - Alessandro Lenoci
AU  - Nicholas Chamberlain Stone
AU  - Ofri Telem
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/10
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.12052
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12052
AB  - Ultralight scalars can form long-lived, macroscopic bound states around spinning black holes, known as superradiance clouds. These clouds provide an additional channel for energy dissipation during close encounters, enhancing the black hole binary formation and merger rates in dense environments such as galactic nuclei. We show that the rate of mergers with mass ratio below 3/10 in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA GWTC-5 catalog can probe ultralight scalars in the mass range [4× 10^−14,10^−13] eV, complementing existing strategies based on black hole spin measurements.
ER  -