Identifying Proca-star mergers via consistent ultralight-boson mass estimates across gravitational-wave events
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866915617241563136 |
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| author | Lorenzo-Medina, Ana Bustillo, Juan Calderón Leong, Samson H. W. |
| author_facet | Lorenzo-Medina, Ana Bustillo, Juan Calderón Leong, Samson H. W. |
| contents | While black-hole and neutron-star mergers are the most plausible sources of current gravitational-wave observations, mergers of exotic compact objects may mimic these signals. Proca stars -- Bose-Einstein condensates of complex vector ultralight bosons -- have gained significant attention for their potential to replicate certain gravitational-wave events while yielding consistent estimates of the boson mass $μ_{B}$ forming the stars. Using a mixture model within a Bayesian framework, we demonstrate that consistent boson-mass estimates across events can be exploited to obtain conclusive evidence for the existence \cor{of} a number $n$ of Proca-star families characterized by respective boson masses $μ_{B}^{i}$, even if no individual event can be conclusively identified as such. Our method provides posterior distributions for $n$ and $μ_{B}^{i}$. Applying this framework to the high-mass events GW190521, GW190426\_190642 \cor{and} GW200220\_061928, we obtain a Bayes Factor ${\cal{B}}^{n=0}_{n=1}=2$ against the Proca-star hypothesis, primarily rooted in the limitation of current Proca-star merger \cor{signal models} to intrinsically weak head-on cases. We show that conclusive evidence $\log{\cal{B}}^{n=1}_{n=0} \geq 5$ could be achieved after 5 to 9 observations of similar event sets, at the $90\%$ credible level. Our framework provides a new way to detect exotic compact objects, somewhat using gravitational-wave detectors as particle detectors. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_07544 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Identifying Proca-star mergers via consistent ultralight-boson mass estimates across gravitational-wave events Lorenzo-Medina, Ana Bustillo, Juan Calderón Leong, Samson H. W. General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology While black-hole and neutron-star mergers are the most plausible sources of current gravitational-wave observations, mergers of exotic compact objects may mimic these signals. Proca stars -- Bose-Einstein condensates of complex vector ultralight bosons -- have gained significant attention for their potential to replicate certain gravitational-wave events while yielding consistent estimates of the boson mass $μ_{B}$ forming the stars. Using a mixture model within a Bayesian framework, we demonstrate that consistent boson-mass estimates across events can be exploited to obtain conclusive evidence for the existence \cor{of} a number $n$ of Proca-star families characterized by respective boson masses $μ_{B}^{i}$, even if no individual event can be conclusively identified as such. Our method provides posterior distributions for $n$ and $μ_{B}^{i}$. Applying this framework to the high-mass events GW190521, GW190426\_190642 \cor{and} GW200220\_061928, we obtain a Bayes Factor ${\cal{B}}^{n=0}_{n=1}=2$ against the Proca-star hypothesis, primarily rooted in the limitation of current Proca-star merger \cor{signal models} to intrinsically weak head-on cases. We show that conclusive evidence $\log{\cal{B}}^{n=1}_{n=0} \geq 5$ could be achieved after 5 to 9 observations of similar event sets, at the $90\%$ credible level. Our framework provides a new way to detect exotic compact objects, somewhat using gravitational-wave detectors as particle detectors. |
| title | Identifying Proca-star mergers via consistent ultralight-boson mass estimates across gravitational-wave events |
| topic | General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.07544 |