No Evidence for Superradiant Axions in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA GWTC-5 Binary Black Hole Spins

Abstract

The quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axion and axion-like particles may form bound clouds around spinning black holes (BHs) when their Compton wavelength is comparable to the BH gravitational radius, depleting the BH spin through what is known as a $\textit{superradiance}$ instability. Using binary BH (BBH) spin measurements obtained from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA GWTC-5 catalog, the most extensive public BBH catalog to date containing $N=257$ mergers with BH masses spanning roughly $5$-$135$ $M_\odot$, we perform a hierarchical Bayesian analysis in the context of a BH spin population model to constrain ultralight axions. The presence of axions at a given mass would imprint a unique signature in the observed mass-spin relation relative to the formation distribution. We find no evidence for axions across more than two decades in mass, excluding axion masses $1.7 \times 10^{-14} \, {\rm eV} \lesssim m_a \lesssim 3.3 \times 10^{-12} \, {\rm eV}$ at 95% confidence. Because prior superradiance bounds in this range derive from X-ray spin measurements with substantial modeling systematics, this result represents one of the strongest robust lower bounds on the QCD axion mass.