Black hole superradiance signatures of ultralight vectors - Teo, Mae Hwee; Dimopoulos, Savas, 1952-; Graham, Peter (Peter Wickelgren); Michelson, Peter F; Stanford University, Department of Physics ([Stanford, California] : [Stanford University], 2020)
The process of superradiance can extract angular momentum and energy from astrophysical black holes (BHs) to populate gravitationally-bound states with an exponentially large number of light bosons. We analytically calculate superradiant growth rates for vectors around rotating BHs in the regime where the vector Compton wavelength is much larger than the BH size. Spin-1 bound states have superradiance times as short as a second around stellar BHs, growing up to a thousand times faster than their spin-0 counterparts. Using measurements of rapidly spinning BHs in X-ray binaries as well as those of supermassive BHs, we can use these fast superradiance rates to exclude a wide range of masses for weakly-coupled spin-1 particles. We also explore routes to detection of new vector particles possible with the advent of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy. The LIGO-Virgo collaboration could discover hints of a new light vector particle in statistical analyses of masses and spins of merging BHs. Vector annihilations source continuous monochromatic gravitational radiation which could be observed by current GW observatories. At design sensitivity, Advanced LIGO may measure up to thousands of annihilation signals from within the Milky Way, while hundreds of BHs born in binary mergers across the observable universe may superradiate vector bound states and become new beacons of monochromatic gravitational waves
Submitted to the Department of Physics
Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020
Rights: (c) Copyright 2020 by Mae Hwee Teo
Rights: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Keywords: theses; text