Crowdsourcing Gravitational Waves from Superradiant Axions
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arXiv
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2026
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| author | Ellis, Sebastian A. R. Ning, Orion Rodd, Nicholas L. Schütte-Engel, Jan |
| author_facet | Ellis, Sebastian A. R. Ning, Orion Rodd, Nicholas L. Schütte-Engel, Jan |
| contents | Black hole superradiance is a powerful probe of ultralight axions. If nature contains a boson with a mass of order $10^{-12}\,$eV, $\textit{mere vacuum fluctuations}$ will lead to its efficient production around spinning stellar mass black holes, forming a gravitational atom that both drains the black hole spin and decays to produce near-monochromatic gravitational waves. Existing superradiance constraints derive primarily from spin measurements of a handful of identified black holes. Here we instead present a detailed study of the population level effect: gravitational waves arising from both the 100 million black holes in the Milky Way and the stochastic signal from axion clouds throughout the universe. We study the impact of a broad range of systematic uncertainties on the black hole properties and compute the projected axion sensitivity for LIGO, as well as the future instruments Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer, and a high-frequency Magnetic Weber Bar. We demonstrate that LIGO can robustly probe axion masses from roughly $10^{-13}\,$eV to $4 \times 10^{-12}\,$eV. If the black hole population extends to masses slightly below $5\,M_{\odot}$ - as hinted for by LIGO inspiral observations - LIGO would approach $10^{-11}\,$eV. Under that same assumption we show that a future high-frequency detector could push considerably higher, potentially beyond $10^{-10}\,$eV in the most optimistic scenarios, reaching towards the lowest masses within the projected sensitivity of axion dark matter searches. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_15734 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Crowdsourcing Gravitational Waves from Superradiant Axions Ellis, Sebastian A. R. Ning, Orion Rodd, Nicholas L. Schütte-Engel, Jan High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Black hole superradiance is a powerful probe of ultralight axions. If nature contains a boson with a mass of order $10^{-12}\,$eV, $\textit{mere vacuum fluctuations}$ will lead to its efficient production around spinning stellar mass black holes, forming a gravitational atom that both drains the black hole spin and decays to produce near-monochromatic gravitational waves. Existing superradiance constraints derive primarily from spin measurements of a handful of identified black holes. Here we instead present a detailed study of the population level effect: gravitational waves arising from both the 100 million black holes in the Milky Way and the stochastic signal from axion clouds throughout the universe. We study the impact of a broad range of systematic uncertainties on the black hole properties and compute the projected axion sensitivity for LIGO, as well as the future instruments Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer, and a high-frequency Magnetic Weber Bar. We demonstrate that LIGO can robustly probe axion masses from roughly $10^{-13}\,$eV to $4 \times 10^{-12}\,$eV. If the black hole population extends to masses slightly below $5\,M_{\odot}$ - as hinted for by LIGO inspiral observations - LIGO would approach $10^{-11}\,$eV. Under that same assumption we show that a future high-frequency detector could push considerably higher, potentially beyond $10^{-10}\,$eV in the most optimistic scenarios, reaching towards the lowest masses within the projected sensitivity of axion dark matter searches. |
| title | Crowdsourcing Gravitational Waves from Superradiant Axions |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15734 |