Speaker
Description
Black holes and neutron stars are the leading candidates for the sources of currently observed gravitational waves. However, exotic compact objects have been proposed as potential alternatives, capable of mimicking the gravitational-wave signatures of these standard sources. Among them, Proca stars—Bose-Einstein condensates of complex vector ultralight bosons—have attracted attention due to their ability to reproduce features of certain LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA events. We use a Bayesian mixture model to analyze the consistency of boson-mass estimates across multiple events. We find that even when no individual event provides conclusive evidence for a Proca-star merger, a consistent boson-mass estimates across events can yield strong cumulative evidence for their existence. This approach allows us to infer both the common boson mass and the fraction of Proca-star mergers hidden within a given dataset.
A mock data study suggests that 5–9 future observations of similar events to those observed to date could decisively confirm a population of Proca-star mergers—if the boson masses align. This method opens a new path to detect exotic compact objects in next-generation gravitational-wave catalogs.
