Search for ultralight bosons in Cygnus X-1 with Advanced LIGO
Name
PhysRevD.101.063020.pdf
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1.19 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a4d3284d33d184b824754d56cca8e1c1
Author(s)
Sun, Ling
Brito, Richard
Isi Banales, Maximiliano S
Date Issued
March 17, 2020
Journal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Sun, Ling, Richard Brito, and Maximiliano Isi. "Search for ultralight bosons in Cygnus X-1 with Advanced LIGO." Physical Review D 101 (March 2020): 063020 ©2020 Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
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 present results of a directed search for such signals from the Cygnus X-1 binary, using data from Advanced LIGO’s second observing run. We find no evidence of gravitational waves in the 250–750 Hz band. Without incorporating existing measurements of the Cygnus X-1 black hole spin, our results disfavor boson masses in the range 5.8≤μ/(10^{-13} eV)≤8.6, assuming that the black hole was born 5×10^{6} years ago with a nearly extremal spin. We then focus on a string axiverse scenario, in which self-interactions enable a cloud for high black-hole spins consistent with measurements for Cygnus X-1. In that model, we constrain the boson masses in the range 9.6≤μ/(10^{-13} eV)≤15.5 for a decay constant f_{a}∼10^{15} GeV. Future applications of our methods to other sources will yield improved constraints.
MIT Department
LIGO (Observatory : Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.101.063020
