# Probing Boson Stars with Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals

## TL;DR

This paper explores using gravitational waves from extreme mass ratio inspirals involving boson stars and supermassive black holes as a novel method to detect and analyze boson stars, leveraging their long-lasting signals and distinctive features.

## Contribution

It introduces a new observational approach using EMRI gravitational waves to probe boson star properties and particle physics parameters, surpassing previous binary-based methods.

## Key findings

- EMRIs can detect a wider range of boson star masses and compactness.
- Gravitational wave signals allow precise boson star mass measurements.
- Tidal disruption effects help distinguish boson stars from other compact objects.

## Abstract

We propose to use gravitational waves from extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRI), composed of a boson star and a supermassive black hole in the center of galaxies, as a new method to search for boson stars. Gravitational waves from EMRI have the advantage of being long-lasting within the frequency band of future space-based interferometer gravitational wave detectors and can accumulate large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for very sub-solar mass boson stars. Compared to gravitational waves from boson star binaries, which fall within the LIGO band, we find that much larger ranges of the mass and compactness of boson stars, as well as the underlying particle physics parameter space, can be probed by EMRI. We take tidal disruption of the boson stars into account and distinguish those which dissolve before the inner-most-stable-circular-orbit (ISCO) and those which dissolve after it. Due to the large number of cycles recorded, EMRIs can lead to a very precise mass determination of the boson star and distinguish it from standard astrophysical compact objects in the event of a signal. Tidal effects in inspiralling binary systems, as well as possible correlated electromagnetic signals, can also serve as potential discriminants.