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  • Open Access

Large black-hole scalar charges induced by cosmology in Horndeski theories

Eugeny Babichev*

Gilles Esposito-Farèse†

Ignacy Sawicki‡ and Leonardo G. Trombetta§

  • Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3, IJCLab, 91405, Orsay, France

  • *Contact author: babichev@ijclab.in2p3.fr
  • †Contact author: gef@iap.fr
  • ‡Contact author: sawicki@fzu.cz
  • §Contact author: trombetta@fzu.cz
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 024043 – Published 18 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bv8z-qbfj

Abstract

The regularity of black-hole solutions, embedded in an expanding universe, is studied in a subclass of Horndeski theories, namely the sum of the simplest quadratic, cubic, and quintic actions. We find that in the presence of a time derivative of the scalar field, driven by the cosmological expansion, this regularity generically imposes large scalar charges for black holes, even when assuming strictly no direct coupling of matter to the scalar field. Such charges cause a significant accretion of the scalar field by the black holes, driving its local time derivative to a small value. This phenomenon, together with the Vainshtein screening typical of these theories, strongly suppresses observable scalar effects. We show that this full class of models is consistent with LIGO/Virgo detections of gravitational waves, but that the LISA mission should be able to constrain the coefficient of the quintic term at the 10−30 level in a self-acceleration scenario, an improvement by 16 orders of magnitude with respect to what is imposed by the speed of gravitational waves.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 024043– Published 18 July, 2025
  • Received 19 April 2025
  • Accepted 30 June 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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