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Detecting Scalar Fields with Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals

Physical Review Letters, ISSN: 1079-7114, Vol: 125, Issue: 14, Page: 141101
2020
  • 57
    Citations
  • 0
    Usage
  • 21
    Captures
  • 0
    Mentions
  • 0
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    57
    • Citation Indexes
      57
  • Captures
    21

Article Description

We study extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), during which a small body spirals into a supermassive black hole, in gravity theories with additional scalar fields. We first argue that no-hair theorems and the properties of known theories that manage to circumvent them introduce a drastic simplification to the problem: The effects of the scalar on supermassive black holes, if any, are mostly negligible for EMRIs in vast classes of theories. We then exploit this simplification to model the inspiral perturbatively and we demonstrate that the scalar charge of the small body leaves a significant imprint on gravitational wave emission. Although much higher precision is needed for waveform modeling, our results strongly suggest that this imprint is observable with Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, rendering EMRIs promising probes of scalar fields.

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