Constraining Ultralight Scalars with Black Hole Binary Mergers in Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

Ultralight scalars can form long-lived, macroscopic bound states around spinning black holes, known as superradiance clouds. These clouds provide an additional channel for energy dissipation during close encounters, enhancing the black hole binary formation and merger rates in dense environments such as galactic nuclei. We show that the rate of mergers with mass ratio below $3/10$ in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA GWTC-5 catalog can probe ultralight scalars in the mass range $[4\times 10^{-14},10^{-13}]$ eV, complementing existing strategies based on black hole spin measurements.