Perturbing Gravitational Atoms: Negative Love, Resonant Tides and Shifted Resonances

[2607.27174] Perturbing Gravitational Atoms: Negative Love, Resonant Tides and Shifted Resonances Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology arXiv:2607.27174 (gr-qc) [Submitted on 29 Jul 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 25 Aug 2026 (this version, v2)] Title: Perturbing Gravitational Atoms: Negative Love, Resonant Tides and Shifted Resonances Authors: Mateja Bošković , Nikola Savić View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: The superradiant instability of rotating black holes can generate a significant overdensity of bosonic matter around them, together forming a gravitational atom. This mechanism allows one to probe a large part of the parameter space of scalars, axions and vectors that lies beyond the reach of traditional detection strategies. Modelling the dynamics of these systems in binaries is, however, subtle, due to the competing nature of the different perturbations. In this work, we provide a consistent scheme to treat these perturbations, including both the minimal set of internal ones (relativistic corrections and self-gravity) and the external tidal field. Within the worldline effective field theory framework, we then calculate the Love numbers of gravitational atoms, for the first time also for the most interesting case of spinning clouds. Certain spinning states are found to have \textit{negative} (static) Love numbers, with a magnitude parametrically enhanced relative to the scaling for the non-spinning states -- in phenomenologically relevant scenarios by a factor $\mathcal{O}(10^2\text{--}10^3)$. Finally, we consider the binary evolution in the early inspiral, assessing the impact of the competing perturbations on \textit{shifted resonances}, which for dense clouds can alter the nature of some of the hyperfine and fine transitions (sinking instead of floating). This dynamical picture allows us to identify at which stages the permanent multipoles are the strongest indicators of new light bosons, and at which the induced ones take over, while keeping track of both types of finite-size effects even during the resonance. More broadly, our results demonstrate that gravitational atoms are a useful toy model for studying the theoretical aspects of tidal response in gravitational-wave physics. Comments: 42 pages + 6 appendices; 7 figures; v2: Substantial revisions to the discussion of self-gravity in Sec. III B, Sec. V B and App. A Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) ; High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) Report number: DESY-26-095 Cite as: arXiv:2607.27174 [gr-qc] (or arXiv:2607.27174v2 [gr-qc] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.27174 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Mateja Bošković [ view email ] [v1] Wed, 29 Jul 2026 17:47:23 UTC (249 KB) [v2] Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:27:47 UTC (240 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: gr-qc < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-07 Change to browse by: hep-ph hep-th References & Citations INSPIRE HEP SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. 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