All-sky search for gravitational wave emission from scalar boson clouds around spinning black holes in LIGO O3 data

TL;DR

This study conducts the first all-sky search for gravitational waves from ultralight scalar boson clouds around spinning black holes using LIGO O3 data, setting new upper limits on signal strength.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive search method for long-duration gravitational waves from scalar boson clouds, covering a broad frequency range and multiple resolutions, with no detections but new constraints.

Findings

No evidence of signals was found.

Set upper limits on gravitational wave strain amplitude (~10^{-25}).

Established exclusion regions in boson mass/black hole mass parameter space.

Abstract

This paper describes the first all-sky search for long-duration, quasi-monochromatic gravitational-wave signals emitted by ultralight scalar boson clouds around spinning black holes using data from the third observing run of Advanced LIGO. We analyze the frequency range from 20~Hz to 610~Hz, over a small frequency derivative range around zero, and use multiple frequency resolutions to be robust towards possible signal frequency wanderings. Outliers from this search are followed up using two different methods, one more suitable for nearly monochromatic signals, and the other more robust towards frequency fluctuations. We do not find any evidence for such signals and set upper limits on the signal strain amplitude, the most stringent being $\approx10^{-25}$ at around 130~Hz. We interpret these upper limits as both an "exclusion region" in the boson mass/black hole mass plane and the maximum detectable distance for a given boson mass, based on an assumption of the age of the black hole/boson cloud system.