Abstract

Gravitational-wave astronomy has delivered dramatic leaps forward in our understanding of gravity, astrophysics and our Universe at large. Despite this success, we are yet to find evidence for one of the holy grails for current scientific research: physics beyond General Relativity (GR) and Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM). To this end, ultra-light bosons are not only one of the simplest extensions of the SM but are also widely considered good candidates to build up part of Dark Matter. For this reason, important efforts are being dedicated towards searching for these particles and, specifically, for the impact of boson clouds on black holes. In this talk I will discuss an alternative strategy to look for these particles. In particular, I will present the first systematic comparison, within the framework of Bayesian inference, of LIGO -Virgo events to a signal model for a specific type of object beyond the SM, namely a set of nearly 1000 numerical simulations of mergers of exotic objects known as (vector) boson-stars: self-gravitating condensates of ultralight bosons. Also, instead of using the canonical technique of analyzing the gravitational-wave strain, I will introduce a new data analysis strategy based on the direct usage of the Newman-Penrose scalar.