Extreme mass-ratio inspiral within an ultralight scalar cloud: Scalar radiation
Creators
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1.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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2.
California Institute of Technology
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3.
Radboud University Nijmegen
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4.
University of Guelph
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5.
Tsinghua University
Abstract
In this work, we study the dynamics of an extreme mass-ratio inspiral (EMRI) embedded within a scalar cloud populated around the massive black hole. This cloud may be generated through the black hole superradiant process if the wavelength of the scalar particle is comparable to the size of the massive black hole. The EMRI motion perturbs the cloud, producing scalar radiation toward infinity and into the black hole horizon. In addition, the backreaction of the scalar radiation onto the orbit modifies the motion of the EMRI and induces an observable gravitational-wave phase shift for a range of system parameters. We quantify the scalar flux and the induced phase shift, as one of the examples of exactly solvable, environmental effects of EMRIs.
Copyright and License
© 2025 American Physical Society.
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to Conor Dyson and Thomas F. M. Spieksma for sharing the data and assisting with the verification of calculations in [125]. We thank Richard Brito and Yanbei Chen for helpful discussions related to this project. We also thank Sam Dolan for providing the Kerr-Lorenz-Circ Mathematica code developed in [96,98,99] and clarifying its usage. We appreciate the insightful comments on the final draft of this manuscript from Conor Dyson, Thomas F. M. Spieksma, and Richard Brito. D. L. and N. Y. acknowledge support from the Simons Foundation through Award No. 896696, NSF Grant No. PHY-2207650, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through award 80NSSC22K0806. P. B. acknowledges support from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) with file number OCENW.M.21.119. C. W.’s research is supported by the Simons Foundation (Award No. 568762), the Brinson Foundation, and the National Science Foundation (via Grants No. PHY-2011961 and No. PHY-2011968). This work makes use of the Kerr-Lorenz-Circ Mathematica code developed by Sam Dolan [96,98,99] and the Black Hole Perturbation Toolkit [134]. Our calculations use the Illinois Campus Cluster, a computing resource that is operated by the Illinois Campus Cluster Program (ICCP) in conjunction with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and is supported by funds from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Some calculations were also conducted in the Resnick High Performance Computing Center, a facility supported by the Resnick Sustainability Institute at the California Institute of Technology.
Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this article are not publicly available upon publication because it is not technically feasible and/or the cost of preparing, depositing, and hosting the data would be prohibitive within the terms of this research project. The data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2507.02045 (arXiv)
Funding
- Simons Foundation
- 896696
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-2207650
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC22K0806
- Dutch Research Council
- OCENW.M.21.119
- Simons Foundation
- 568762
- Brinson Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-2011961
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-2011968
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Resnick Sustainability Institute
Dates
- Submitted
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2025-07-05
- Accepted
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2025-08-22