Stochastic and resolvable gravitational waves from ultralight bosons

Abstract

Ultralight scalar fields around spinning black holes can trigger superradiant instabilities, forming a long-lived bosonic condensate outside the horizon. We use numerical solutions of the perturbed field equations and astrophysical models of massive and stellar-mass black hole populations to compute, for the first time, the stochastic gravitational-wave background from these sources. In optimistic scenarios the background is observable by Advanced LIGO and LISA for field masses $m_s$ in the range $\sim [2\times 10^{-13},10^{-12}]\mathrm{eV}$ and $\sim 5\times [10^{-19},10^{-16}]\mathrm{eV}$, respectively, and it can affect the detectability of resolvable sources. Our estimates suggest that an analysis of the stochastic background limits from LIGO O1 might already be used to marginally exclude axions with mass $\sim 10^{-12.5}\mathrm{eV}$. Semicoherent searches with Advanced LIGO (LISA) should detect $\sim 15(5)$ to $200(40)$ resolvable sources for scalar field masses $3\times 10^{-13}$ ($10^{-17}$) eV. LISA measurements of massive BH spins could either rule out bosons in the range $\sim [10^{-18},2\times 10^{-13}]$ eV, or measure $m_s$ with ten percent accuracy in the range $\sim [10^{-17},10^{-13}]$ eV.

Comments: 6 pages, 4 Figures; v2: small changes to match version published in Physical Review Letters