Abstract
Ultralight bosons in the vicinity of compact objects can form gravitationally bound states, some of which undergo exponential growth by extracting rotational energy from black holes or through relaxation from ambient waves. These bound states can attain field amplitudes approaching the Planck scale, giving rise to phenomena analogous to those in early-universe cosmology and to observational signatures far stronger than those expected from local dark matter detection, ranging from electromagnetic features accessible through black hole imaging to gravitational wave imprints of the surrounding environment. In the case of accreting axion clouds, the field can accumulate into approximately spherical configurations with amplitudes near the decay constant, exhibiting either Bosenova collapse or saturation depending on the growth rate and axion mass. The resulting emission flux exhibits discrete spectral features determined by the axion potential, opening the possibility of probing ultraviolet axion models through terrestrial detection of these fluxes.