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Signatures of gravitational atoms from black hole mergers
Gravitational-wave signals from black hole mergers could reveal the presence of “gravitational atoms”—black holes surrounded by clouds of axions or other light bosons.
Considering a general set of black hole orbital motions—including those with eccentricity and inclination—the trio has pinpointed potentially detectable features of gravitational atoms in binaries. Floating and sinking orbits—together with ionization and the many possible types of resonances (hyperfine, fine, and Bohr)—should be accounted for in order to properly describe the evolution of such atomic binaries. According to Tomaselli and his collaborators, these sinking-orbit binaries can retain their cloud in the inspiral phase, when the gravitational signals produced by the black holes enter the detection window of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and other future gravitational-wave detectors.
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