arXiv subjects

Xing-Yu Yang

Publications and source records attributed to Xing-Yu Yang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Ultralight dark matter mixed with primordial black holes

Dark matter candidates span many orders of magnitude in mass, from ultralight bosonic fields to massive compact objects. In this work, we connect these two extremes by investigating ultralight dark matter (ULDM) mixed with primordial black holes (PBHs). We study mixed ULDM-PBH halos by separating the continuum PBH contribution from the shot-noise fluctuation generated by discrete PBHs. The continuum contribution enters the averaged Schr\"odinger-Poisson background, while the discreteness contribution is treated as a perturbation that induces ULDM eigenmode transitions and soliton heating. The two contributions have distinct parametric dependencies: continuum effects scale with PBH fraction, whereas discreteness-driven transition rates scale with the product of PBH fraction and individual PBH mass in the perturbative regime. For a fiducial mixed halo with ULDM particle mass $10^{-22}\,\mathrm{eV}$, virial mass of order $10^{10}\,M_{\odot}$, and PBH fraction $1\%$, the continuum PBH component modifies the background density, gravitational potential, and low-lying ULDM eigenvalues only at the sub-percent level. Nevertheless, this percent-level continuum PBH contribution produces a tens-of-percent response in the coherent soliton region, changing the radial mode participation by about $20\%$. For stellar-mass PBHs, the discrete shot-noise fluctuation induces extremely slow ULDM mode transitions, with the fastest low-lying multiplet transition having a timescale of order $10^9\,\mathrm{Gyr}$ for solar-mass PBHs. In this regime, the leading PBH effect is the continuum contribution, while discrete PBH shot noise is dynamically negligible on galactic timescales.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Periodic Gravitational Lensing with Oscillating Boson Stars

We show that oscillating (real-scalar) boson stars generically host an \emph{oscillating radial caustic}. Sources near this caustic cross it every half period, thereby producing periodic caustic-crossing lensing. The resulting observables are phase locked to the lens oscillation: image-pair creation or annihilation, changing image morphology, achromatic photometric spikes, and astrometric motion. This signal provides a distinctive target for time-domain astronomy, and its detection would reveal an intrinsically time-dependent compact dark-sector object. Event-number estimates indicate a measurable discovery space with current astrometric and high-cadence photometric surveys, while null searches would constrain the abundance of such objects as dark matter. The predictions rely only on the dynamics of real-scalar condensates and extend naturally to self-interacting real scalars, including axionlike particles, and to ultralight vector bosons.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

Boson Stars Hosting Black Holes

We study a self-gravitating ultralight dark matter condensate (a boson star) hosting a central black hole, in the nonrelativistic limit, which we refer to as a boson star black hole (BS-BH) system. We numerically solve the equations of hydrostatic equilibrium, consistently incorporating the gravitational potential of the black hole, to obtain all possible configurations of this BS-BH system for different boson star masses, interaction types, and black hole masses. We also propose an analytic expression for the density profile and compare it with the numerical results, finding good agreement for attractive interactions and for a finite range of mass ratios between the black hole and boson star. Finally, considering the inspiral of this BS-BH system with a second, smaller black hole, we study the dephasing of gravitational waves due to the presence of the dark matter environment. A Fisher matrix analysis reveals the regions of parameter space of the dark matter mass and self-coupling that future gravitational wave observatories such as LISA can probe.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Modulations of Gravitational Waves due to Non-static Gravitational Lenses

Gravitational waves (GWs) offer a new observational window into the universe, providing insights into compact objects and cosmic structures. Gravitational lensing, commonly studied in electromagnetic waves, also affects GWs, introducing magnification, time delays, and multiple images. While existing studies focus on static lenses, many astrophysical lenses are dynamic, with time-varying mass distributions such as moving stars or orbiting binaries. We develop a general theoretical framework to describe non-static lenses and demonstrate how they modulate GW signals, inducing unique time-varying amplitude modulations and spectral broadening. By examining uniformly moving and orbiting binary lenses, we show that these modulations provide new observational signatures, enhancing our understanding of lensing objects and the dynamics of the universe. Our findings have important implications for GW astronomy, offering novel ways to probe lens dynamics and improve the interpretations of GW signals.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Gravitational Wave Duet by Resonating Binary Black Holes within Ultralight Dark Matter

Gravitational wave observations have significantly broadened our capacity to explore fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model, providing crucial insights into dark matter that are inaccessible through conventional methods. Here, we investigate the resonant interactions between binary black hole systems and solitons, self-gravitating configurations of ultralight bosonic dark matter, which induce metric perturbations and generate distinct oscillatory patterns in gravitational waves. Upcoming experiments such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna could detect the oscillatory patterns in gravitational waveforms, providing an evidence for solitons. Because the effect relies solely on gravity, it does not assume any coupling of the dark sector to Standard Model particles, highlighting the capability of future gravitational-wave surveys to probe dark matter.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

Detecting the dark sector through scalar-induced gravitational waves

We investigate the evolution of cosmological scalar perturbations in the case that the background radiation is weakly coupled to a light scalar field $\phi$. The light scalar $\phi$ is a homogeneous background field with a large initial value. In the radiation-dominated Universe, the coupling term introduces an effective mass to $\phi$ and the background ultra-relativistic particles. The oscillations of $\phi$ result in the periodic change of the equation of state parameter and the sound speed, which provides a novel mechanism to amplify subhorizon scalar perturbations through parametric resonance. The amplification of scalar perturbations leads to a stochastic gravitational-waves background~(SGWB) expected to be observed by multiband gravitational wave observers. The observation of the SGWB helps to determine the initial value of $\phi$ and the coupling strength of the interaction. This mechanism is generally applicable to the interactions that introduce an effective mass, and we take the interaction between $\phi$ and electrons as a concrete example to illustrate the result. We find that under the condition that the coupling coefficient $\lambda=10^{-16}$ and the initial value $\phi_i=10^{18}$ GeV, the resulting SGWB spectrum is expected to be observed by the future observers including LISA, $Taiji$, DECIGO and BBO.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Explaining Pulsar Timing Array Observations with Primordial Gravitational Waves in Parity-Violating Gravity

The pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations have recently suggested the presence of a gravitational wave background at nano-Hertz frequencies. In this paper, we explore potential inflationary interpretation of this signal within the context of a simple and health parity-violating gravity model termed the Nieh-Yan modified Teleparallel Gravity. Through this model, two inflationary scenarios are evaluated, both yielding significant polarized primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) that align well with the results from PTA observations. Furthermore, the resulting PGWs can display strong circular polarization and significant anisotropies in the PTA frequency band, which are distinct features to be verified by observations of both PTA and the cosmic microwave background.The detection of such a distinctive background of PGWs is expected to provide strong evidence supporting our scenarios and insights into inflationary dynamics and gravity theory.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Gravitational wave sources for Pulsar Timing Arrays

Very recently, several pulsar timing array collaborations, including CPTA, EPTA, and NANOGrav, reported their results from searches for an isotropic stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), with each finding positive evidence for SGWB. In this work, we assessed the credibility of interpreting the Hellings-Downs correlated free-spectrum process of EPTA, PPTA, and NANOGrav as either the result of supermassive black hole binary mergers or various stochastic SGWB sources that originated in the early Universe, including first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, domain walls, and large-amplitude curvature perturbations. Our observations show that the current new datasets do not display a strong preference for any specific SGWB source based on Bayesian analysis.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Gravitational wave probes on self-interacting dark matter surrounding an intermediate mass black hole

The presence of dark matter overdensities surrounding a black hole can influence the evolution of a binary system. The gravitational wave signals emitted by a black hole binary offer a promising means to probe the dark matter environments near a black hole. The dense region of dark matter can lead to the dephasing of gravitational waveforms, which can be detected by upcoming experiments such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). The dark matter density profile around the black hole can vary for different dark matter models. Our study specifically investigates the impact of the ultralight self-interacting scalar dark matter (SIDM) on the gravitational wave signals emitted by black hole binaries. A distinctive characteristic of SIDM surrounding a black hole, as opposed to collisionless dark matter, is the formation of a soliton core. We perform a Fisher matrix analysis to estimate the size of the soliton and the corresponding SIDM parameter space that future LISA-like gravitational wave experiments can explore.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Gravitational microlensing by dressed primordial black holes

The accretion of dark matter around the primordial black holes (PBHs) could lead to the formation of surrounding minihalos, whose mass can be several orders of magnitude higher than the central PBH mass. The gravitational microlensing produced by such dressed PBHs could be quite different from that of the bare PBHs, which may significantly affect the constraints on the PBH abundance. In this paper, we study the gravitational microlensing produced by dressed PBHs in detail. We find that all the microlensing effects by dressed PBHs have asymptotic behavior depending on the minihalo size, which can be used to predict the microlensing effects by comparing the halo size with the Einstein radius. When the minihalo radius and the Einstein radius are comparable, the effect of the density distribution of the halo is significant to the microlensing. Applying the stellar microlensing by dressed PBHs to the data of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment and Subaru/HSC Andromeda observations, we obtain the improved constraints on the PBH abundance. It shows that the existence of dark matter minihalos surrounding PBHs can strengthen the constraints on the PBH abundance from stellar microlensing by several orders, and can shift the constraints to the well-known asteroid mass window where PBHs can constitute all the dark matter.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Pulsar Timing Residual induced by Wideband Ultralight Dark Matter with Spin 0, 1, 2

The coherent oscillation of ultralight dark matter in the mass regime around $10^{-23}$ eV induces changes in gravitational potential with the frequency in the nanohertz range. This effect is known to produce a monochromatic signal in the pulsar timing residuals. Here we discuss a multifield scenario that produces a wide spectrum of frequencies, such that the ultralight particle oscillation can mimic the pulsar timing signal of stochastic common spectrum process. We discuss how ultralight dark matter with various spins produces such a wide band spectrum on pulsar timing residuals and perform the Bayesian analysis to constrain the parameters. It turns out that the stochastic background detected by NANOGrav can be associated with a wideband ultralight dark matter.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Testing primordial black hole and measuring the Hubble constant with multiband gravitational-wave observations

There exist two kinds of stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds associated with the primordial curvature perturbations. One is called induced gravitational wave due to the nonlinear coupling of curvature perturbations to tensor perturbations, while the other is produced by coalescences of binary primordial black holes formed when the large amplitude curvature perturbations reenter the horizon in the radiation dominant era. In this paper we find a quite useful relation for the peak frequencies of these two stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds. This relation can not only offer a smoking-gun criterion for the existence of primordial black holes, but also provide a method for measuring the Hubble constant $H_0$ by multiband observations of the stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

The Gravitational-Wave Physics II: Progress

It has been a half-decade since the first direct detection of gravitational waves, which signifies the coming of the era of the gravitational-wave astronomy and gravitational-wave cosmology. The increasing number of the detected gravitational-wave events has revealed the promising capability of constraining various aspects of cosmology, astronomy, and gravity. Due to the limited space in this review article, we will briefly summarize the recent progress over the past five years, but with a special focus on some of our own work for the Key Project ``Physics associated with the gravitational waves'' supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In particular, (1) we have presented the mechanism of the gravitational-wave production during some physical processes of the early Universe, such as inflation, preheating and phase transition, and the cosmological implications of gravitational-wave measurements; (2) we have put constraints on the neutron star maximum mass according to GW170817 observations; (3) we have developed a numerical relativity algorithm based on the finite element method and a waveform model for the binary black hole coalescence along an eccentric orbit.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Energy spectrum of gravitational waves

The energy spectrum of gravitational waves (GWs), which depicts the energy of GWs per unit volume of space per logarithmic frequency interval normalized to the critical density of the Universe, is a widely used way for quantifying the sensitivity of GW detectors and the strength of GWs, since it has the advantage of having a clear physical meaning. It was found that the energy spectrum of GWs depends on the gauge when the GWs beyond the linear order perturbations are considered. We show that this gauge dependence issue originates from the inappropriate description for the energy of GWs. With the proper description for the energy of GWs, we give a well-defined energy spectrum of GWs, in which the gauge issue disappears naturally.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

On the energy of gravitational waves

The energy of gravitational waves is a fundamental problem in gravity theory. The existing descriptions for the energy of gravitational waves, such as the well-known Isaacson energy-momentum tensor, suffer from several defects. Due to the equivalence principle, the gravitational energy-momentum can only be defined quasilocally, being associated with a closed spacelike 2-surface bounding a region. We propose a new approach to derive the energy of gravitational waves $directly$ from the quasilocal gravitational energy. Such an approach is natural and consistent with the quasilocality of gravitational energy-momentum.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Constraints on a mixed model of dark matter particles and primordial black holes from the Galactic 511 keV line

The galactic 511 keV gamma-ray line has been observed since 1970's, and was identified as the result of electron-positron annihilation, but the origin of such positrons is still not clear. Apart from the astrophysical explanations, the possibilities that such positrons come from dark matter (DM) annihilation are also widely studied. Primordial black hole (PBH) is also an extensively studied candidate of DM. If PBHs exist, the DM particles may be gravitationally bound to the PBHs and form halo around PBHs with density spikes. DM annihilation in these density spikes can enhance the production rate of positrons from DM particles, but the signal morphology is similar to the decaying DM. We consider such a mixed model consisting of DM particles and PBHs and obtain the upper limit from the data of 511 keV gamma-ray line from INTEGRAL/SPI on the decaying component of DM particles and the constraint on the PBH abundance. These constraints are general and independent of particle DM models. For the mixed model consisting of excited DM and PBHs, the constraints on the PBH abundance can be down to $O(10^{-17})$ for DM particle with mass around $1~\mathrm{TeV}$, which is more stringent than that obtained from the extragalactic gamma-ray background.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

On the gravitational wave sources from the NANOGrav 12.5-yr data

The NANOGrav Collaboration recently reported a strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process in the pulsar-timing data. We evaluate the evidence of interpreting this process as mergers of super massive black hole binaries and/or various stochastic gravitational wave background sources in the early Universe, including first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, domain walls, and large amplitude curvature perturbations. We discuss the implications of the constraints on these possible sources. It is found that the cosmic string is the most favored source against other gravitational wave sources based on the Bayes factor analysis.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2020

Primordial black holes and gravitational waves from parametric amplification of curvature perturbations

We investigate a new mechanism to create large curvature perturbations on small scales due to parameter resonance in a single-field inflationary model with a small periodic structure upon the potential. After reentering the horizon, the amplified curvature perturbations can lead to observable primordial black holes as well as stochastic gravitational waves. The mass of primordial black holes and frequency of the induced gravitational waves depend on the model parameters. The resulted primordial black hole could constitute all dark matter or a fraction of dark matter in the universe, and corresponding stochastic gravitational waves fall in the frequency band measurable for the pulsar timing array and the space-based gravitational wave detectors.

astro-ph.CO↗