GW241011 is one of the exceptional binary events detected to date by the LVK, featuring an asymmetric mass ratio and a highly spinning primary. The signal is on the lower mass end and has a high SNR. It is therefore almost a perfect laborary to test the nature of the more massive object in the binary and see how well it could be described by the Kerr hypothesis. In our publication, we address this question by considering the measurement of a spin-induced quadrupole moment from GW241011 and comparing it to the predictions of various exotic compact objects. Such analysis enabled us to weed out certain exotic proposals that cannot explain the nature of the primary of GW241011 and place an upper bound on its compactness. Check out our interview in the recent press release here.
We were interviewed for a couple of artciles based off our publication in Physical Review Letters. In this work we simulate with high-precision the inspiral, merger and ringdown of binaries consisting of two non-spinning boson stars. The accuracy and longevity of gravitational wave signals generated in the process is sufficient to perform gravitational wave analysis and assess the impact of a hypothetical boson star signal on gravitational wave observations. Our results show that binary boson star binaries may be detected with present gravitational wave detectors, however whether they can be completely distinguished from binaries of black hole and neutron stars, is a more complicated question. In a nutshell, we demonstrate how sifficiently compact boson star binaries can be very easily mistaken for binary black holes, whilst more 'dilute' boson star binaries can stand out as sore thumbs in the data, exhibiting smoking-gun features. If this sounds interesting, I encourage out to checkout our interviews and artciles about our work below:
(i) Interview for the New Scientist: "Signals from exotic new stars could hide in gravitational wave data".
(ii) Interview for Plus: "Boson stars: Beyond vanilla".
(iii) Our work has also featured on the Faculty of Mathematics Insights.
I have illustrated a series of comics on "A day in the life of a physicist" and a magical story of mice doing science. See here to see the illustrations.