Searching for vector boson-star mergers within LIGO-Virgo intermediate-mass black-hole merger candidates

Understand

We present the first systematic search for exotic compact mergers in Advanced LIGO and Virgo events.

• We compare the short gravitational-wave signals GW190521, GW190426$\_$190642, GW200220$\_$061928 and the trigger 200114$\_$020818 (or S200114f) to a new catalogue of 759 numerical simulations of head-on mergers of horizonless exotic compact objects known as Proca stars, interpreted as self-gravitating lumps of (fuzzy) dark matter sourced by an ultralight (vector) bosonic particle.
• The Proca-star merger hypothesis is strongly rejected with respect to the black hole merger one by GW190426, weakly rejected by GW200220 and weakly favoured by GW190521 and S200114f.
• GW190521 and GW200220 yield highly consistent boson masses of $\mu_{\rm B} = 8.69^{+0.61}_{-0.75}\times10^{-13}$ eV and $\mu_{\rm B} = 9.13^{+1.18}_{-1.30}\times10^{-13}$ eV at the $90\%$ credible level.