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

We present the first systematic search for exotic compact mergers in Advanced LIGO and Virgo events. We compare the short gravitational-wave signals GW190521, GW200220 and GW190426, and the trigger 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 for GW190426, weakly rejected for GW200220 and weakly favoured for GW190521 and S200114f. GW190521 and GW200220 yield highly consistent boson masses of µ B = 8 . 68 +0 . 61 − 0 . 77 × 10 − 13 eV and µ B = 9 . 12 +1 . 48 − 1 . 33 × 10 − 13 eV at the 90% credible level. We conduct a preliminary population study of the compact binaries behind these events. Including (excluding) S200114f as a real event, and ignoring boson-mass consistencies across events, we estimate a fraction of Proca-star mergers of ζ = 0 . 27 +0 . 45 − 0 . 25 (0 . 42 +0 . 41 − 0 . 34 ). We discuss the impact of boson-mass consistency across events in such estimates. Our results maintain GW190521 as a Proca-star merger candidate and pave the way towards population studies considering exotic compact objects.

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