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The response of ultralight dark matter to supermassive black holes and binaries

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arxiv 2009.00012 v1 pith:Y7NUGNKX submitted 2020-08-31 gr-qc astro-ph.HEhep-phhep-th

The response of ultralight dark matter to supermassive black holes and binaries

classification gr-qc astro-ph.HEhep-phhep-th
keywords matterblackdarkstarsbinariesholesscalarsupermassive
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Scalar fields can give rise to confined structures, such as boson stars or Q-balls. These objects are interesting hypothetical new "dark matter stars," but also good descriptions of dark matter haloes when the fields are ultralight. Here, we study the dynamical response of such confined bosonic structures when excited by external matter (stars, planets or black holes) in their vicinities. Such perturbers can either be plunging through the bosonic configuration or simply act as periodic sources. Our setup can also efficiently describe the interaction between a massive black hole and the surrounding environment, shortly after the massive body has undergone a "kick", due to the collapse of baryonic matter at the galactic center. It also depicts dark matter depletion as a reaction to an inspiralling binary within the halo. We calculate total energy loss, and linear and angular momenta radiated during these processes, and perform the first self-consistent calculation of dynamical friction acting on moving bodies in these backgrounds. We show that the gravitational collapse to a supermassive black hole at the center of a Newtonian boson star (NBS) is accompanied by a small change in the surrounding core. The NBS eventually gets accreted, but only on times larger than a Hubble scale for astrophysical parameters. Stellar or supermassive binaries are able to "stir" and expel scalar from the NBS. For binaries in the LIGO or LISA band, close to coalescence, scalar emission affects the waveform at leading $-6$ PN order with respect to the dominant quadrupolar term; the coefficient is too small to allow detection by next-generation interferometers. Our results provide a complete picture of the interaction between black holes or stars and the ultralight dark matter environment they live in.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Resonances as signatures of scalar clouds in eccentric extreme-mass-ratio inspirals

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Eccentricity in EMRIs around scalar clouds produces relativistic resonances in scalar fluxes near the last stable orbit, leading to observable dephasing in gravitational waveforms.

  2. Relativistic effects in extreme-mass-ratio inspirals within scalar clouds: Eccentric and inclined orbits

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Extends relativistic EMRI calculations in scalar clouds from circular-equatorial to eccentric and inclined orbits around Schwarzschild black holes, revealing apsidal-precession resonances and inclination-dependent net...

  3. Resonances as signatures of scalar clouds in eccentric extreme-mass-ratio inspirals

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Eccentric EMRIs exhibit relativistic resonances in scalar fluxes that enhance interactions with scalar clouds and amplify waveform dephasing relative to circular orbits.

  4. Stellar Superradiance and Low-Energy Absorption in Dense Nuclear Media

    hep-ph 2025-12 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Collective nucleon scattering in neutron-star matter suppresses the effective absorption of ultralight bosons at the long wavelengths relevant for superradiance, weakening the link between stellar cooling bounds and s...

  5. Scalar fields around black hole binaries in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA

    gr-qc 2025-10 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Semi-analytic waveform model for scalar environments around black hole binaries is validated against numerical relativity and applied to LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data to obtain upper limits on scalar densities with tentative ...

  6. Constraining Ultralight Scalar Dark Matter in the Galactic Center with the S2 Orbit

    hep-ph 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Using S2 star periastron precession, the work constrains ultralight scalar dark matter mass ratios to below 10^{-3} or 1 and improves quadratic coupling bounds for masses 10^{-20} to 10^{-18} eV.

  7. A multi-parameter expansion for the evolution of asymmetric binaries in astrophysical environments

    gr-qc 2025-07 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    A multi-parameter formalism is developed to describe asymmetric binaries in general matter distributions by perturbing around Schwarzschild and reducing metric and fluid perturbations to wave equations similar to the ...