Superradiant instabilities of massive bosons around exotic compact objects

TL;DR

This paper investigates how boundary reflections in exotic compact objects influence superradiant instabilities of ultralight bosons, revealing modifications to growth rates and constraints on particle masses compared to black holes.

Contribution

It provides an analytical correction factor for superradiant growth rates around ECOs and explores how boundary reflectivity impacts instability timescales and astrophysical constraints.

Findings

Boundary reflection modifies superradiant growth rates.

Significant effects occur for high reflectivity ($| ext{K}| o 1$).

Constraints on ultralight particle mass are affected by ECO boundary properties.

Abstract

Superradiantly unstable ultralight particles around a classical rotating black hole (BH) can form an exponentially growing bosonic cloud, which have been shown to provide an astrophysical probe to detect ultralight particles and constrain their mass. However, the classical BH picture has been questioned, and different theoretical alternatives have been proposed. Exotic compact objects (ECOs) are horizonless alternatives to BHs featuring a reflective surface (with a reflectivity $\mathcal{K}$) in place of the event horizon. In this work, we study superradiant instabilities around ECOs, particularly focusing on the influence of the boundary reflection. We calculate the growth rate of superradiant instabilities around ECOs, and show that the result can be related to the BH case by a correction factor $g_{\mathcal{K}}$, for which we find an explicit analytical expression and a clear physical interpretation. Additionally, we consider the time evolution of superradiant instabilities and find that the boundary reflection can either shorten or prolong the growth timescale. As a result, the boundary reflection alters the superradiance exclusion region on the Regge plane, potentially affecting constraints on the mass of ultralight particles. For a mildly reflective surface ($|\mathcal{K}|\lesssim 0.5$), the exclusion region is not substantially changed, while significant effects from the boundary reflection can occur for an extreme reflectivity ($|\mathcal{K}|\gtrsim0.9$).