Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1706.00678

An axion-like scalar field environment effect on binary black hole merger

Qing Yang·Li-Wei Ji·Bin Hu·Zhou-Jian Cao·Rong-Gen Cai
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Environment, such as the accretion disk, could modify the signal of the gravitational wave from the astrophysical black hole binaries. In this article, we model the matter field around the intermediate-mass binary black holes by means of an axion-like scalar field and investigate their joint evolution. In details, we consider the equal mass binary black holes surrounded by a shell of axion-like scalar field both in spherical symmetric and non-spherical symmetric cases, and with different strength of the scalar field. Our result shows that the environmental scalar field could essentially modify the dynamics. Firstly, in the spherical symmetric case, with increasing of the scalar field strength, the number of circular orbit of the binary black hole is reduced. It means that the scalar field could significantly accelerate the merger process. Secondly, once the scalar field strength exceeds certain critical value, the scalar field could collapse into a third black hole with its mass being larger than the binary. Consequently, the new black hole collapsed from the environmental scalar field could accrete the binary promptly and the binary collides head-on between each other. In this process, there is almost no any quadrupole signal produced, namely the gravitational wave is greatly suppressed. Thirdly, when the scalar field strength is relatively smaller than the critical value, the black hole orbit could develop eccentricity through the accretion of the scalar field. Fourthly, during the initial stage of the inspire, the gravitational attractive force from the axion-like scalar field could induce a sudden turn in the binary orbits, hence result in a transient wiggle in the gravitational waveform. Finally, in the non-spherical case, the scalar field could gravitationally attract the binary moving toward the mass center of the scalar field and slow down the merger process.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcastro-ph.COhep-th

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Qing Yang, Li-Wei Ji, Bin Hu, Zhou-Jian Cao, Rong-Gen Cai. 2017-06-01. An axion-like scalar field environment effect on binary black hole merger. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527%2F18%2F6%2F65

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗