PHYSICS DISSERTATION DEFENSE: Marios Galanis

Ph.D. Candidate:  Marios Galanis

Research Advisor:  Savas Dimopoulos

Date:   Wednesday, March 30th
Time: 2 PM

Location: PAB 102/103

Zoom Link:  https://stanford.zoom.us/j/97029777547

Zoom Password: email nickswan@stanford for password

 

Title: Black hole superradiance of self-interacting scalar fields

Abstract: Black hole superradiance is a powerful probe of light, weakly-coupled hidden sector particles. Particles with a Compton wavelength comparable to the black hole’s radius lead to an instability, extracting mass and angular momentum from the black hole. Many ultralight candidates, such as axions, generically have self-interactions that can influence the evolution of the superradiant instability.  Self-interactions lead to energy exchange between bound levels and particle emission to infinity; for large self-couplings, superradiant growth is saturated at a quasi-equilibrium configuration of reduced level occupation numbers. I will review the basic aspects of black hole superradiance and then analyze the effects of self-interactions in detail. Finally, I will discuss signatures, which include coherent, monochromatic gravitational and axion waves that can be probed in current or future experiments.