Gravitational Waves from Dark Boson Star binary mergers

TL;DR

This paper explores the gravitational wave signals from mergers of Dark Boson Stars, a novel type of dark matter compact object, highlighting their unique signatures compared to known astrophysical sources.

Contribution

It introduces the first numerical analysis of Dark Boson Star mergers and compares their gravitational wave signatures with existing models and approximations.

Findings

Dark Boson Stars produce distinguishable gravitational wave signatures.

Their merger dynamics differ from black holes, neutron stars, and traditional boson stars.

Results suggest potential for gravitational wave detection of dark matter objects.

Abstract

Gravitational wave astronomy might allow us to detect the coalescence of low-brightness astrophysical compact objects which are extremely difficult to be observed with current electromagnetic telescopes. Besides classical sources like black holes and neutron stars, other candidates include Exotic Compact Objects (ECOs), which could exist in theory but have never yet been observed in Nature. Among different possibilities, here we consider Dark Stars, astrophysical compact objects made of dark matter such that only interact with other stars through gravity. We study numerically the dynamics and the gravitational waves produced during the binary coalescence of Dark Stars composed by bosonic fields. These results are compared both with Post-Newtonian approximations and with previous simulations of binary boson stars, which interact both through gravity and matter. Our analysis indicates that Dark Boson Stars belong to a new kind of compact objects, representing stars made with different species, whose merger produces a gravitational signature clearly distinguishable from other astrophysical objects like black holes, neutron stars and even boson stars.