Constraining an Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion black hole at the Galactic Center with the orbit of the S2 star

Abstract

Abstract We derive new constraints on the dilaton parameter appearing in the spherically-symmetric black hole solution of Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion gravity, by studying the geodesic motion of the S2 star in the Galactic Center. Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion black holes represent a compelling alternative to the standard black hole paradigm in General Relativity. This theory emerges from the low energy effective action of the heterotic string theory and has been proven to predict peculiar observational features from the direct imaging of black hole shadows. At a fundamental level, Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion includes additional electromagnetic, dilatonic and axionic fields coupled to the space-time metric. When considering charged non-rotating black hole solutions, the additional fields endow the metric with one extra parameter b, called dilaton parameter, that is theoretically bound to 0 < b < M. Using publicly available astrometric data for S2 we derive an upper bound on b ≲ 12M at 95% confidence level and we demonstrate that only including the measurement of the relativistic orbital precession for S2 is sufficient to reduce this bound to b ≲ 1.4M at the same confidence level. Additionally, using a mock data mimicking future observations of S2 with the GRAVITY interferometer, we show that improved astrometric precision can help further narrow down the allowed dilaton parameter range to b ≲ 0.033M after monitoring the S2 orbit for one and a half period.