Constraints on an axionlike particle from black hole spin superradiance
Lei-dong Cheng, Hong Zhang, Shou-Shan Bao
Abstract
The mass of the axionlike particles could be constrained by the observed black hole spin distribution. In this work, we study such constraints using the LIGO/Virgo data and the recently improved superradiance formula, which agrees better with the numerical results. The effect of the merger timescale ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{M}$ is also carefully investigated with Bayesian analysis. We find the strength of evidence for the range $\ensuremath{-}12.89\ensuremath{\le}{\mathrm{log}}_{10}(\ensuremath{\mu}/\mathrm{eV})\ensuremath{-}12.57$, which is excluded in the analysis with ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{\mathrm{M}}$ fixed at ${10}^{7}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{yr}$, could not be simply ruled out. We also find two mass ranges close to ${\mathrm{log}}_{10}(\ensuremath{\mu}/\mathrm{eV})=\ensuremath{-}12.10$ and ${\mathrm{log}}_{10}(\ensuremath{\mu}/\mathrm{eV})=\ensuremath{-}11.75$ which are slightly favored by the currently available data. The evidence is still weak and depends on the initial spin distribution of the black holes. No definite conclusion about the existence of ALPs could be drawn at the moment. The correlation of the ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{\mathrm{M}}$, and the BH mass and spin is not considered in this work.