Speaker
Description
Extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs) are among the key targets for future gravitational wave observations. While the study of EMRIs in vacuum has been extensively developed over the past decades, environmental effects arising from matter surrounding black holes have also attracted significant attention in recent years. A proper understanding of such effects may open up the possibility of probing black hole environments through gravitational wave observations. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of EMRIs in the presence of a scalar field environment. A well-motivated example is a superradiant cloud of ultralight scalar fields, which are motivated by high energy physics and are also viable dark matter candidates. In contrast to previous studies focusing on the resonant transitions of the scalar cloud by the secondary object, we consider resonances induced in the secondary’s orbit by the scalar environment. Understanding these orbital resonances is an essential step toward constructing EMRI waveforms that incorporate scalar environmental effects.