GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2

Abstract

We describe the observation of GW170104, a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of a pair of stellar-mass black holes. The signal was measured on January 4, 2017 at 10∶11:58.6 UTC by the twin advanced detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory during their second observing run, with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13 and a false alarm rate less than 1 in 70 000 years. −0.07 . We constrain the magnitude of modifications to the gravitational-wave dispersion relation and perform null tests of general relativity. Assuming that gravitons are dispersed in vacuum like massive particles, we bound the graviton mass to m g ≤ 7.7 × 10 −23 eV=c 2 . In all cases, we find that GW170104 is consistent with general relativity.

Post-Newtonian templates for binary black-hole inspirals: the effect of the horizon fluxes and the secular change in the black-hole masses and spins

“…The recent observation GW170104 [6] disfavors the aligned-spin configuration. Motivated by this measurement, the first group is concerned with BBHs with antialigned spins.…”

“…The BBH waveform models have been further improved over the years and many applications to detection have already followed. In the context of testing the dynamical sector of general relativity (GR) [45], for instance, GW150914, GW151226 and GW170104 showed no statistical significant evidence on deviations from PN coefficients of the GW phase predicted by GR [5,6,45]. In [46], GW150914 was directly compared with NR simulations and it was shown that they are mutually consistent.…”

“…The first detection of gravitational waves (GWs), GW150914 from binary black holes (BBHs) [1,2,3,4] with the succeeding detection, GW151226 [5], GW170104 [6], GW170814 [7], and a candidate event, LVT151012 [8], recorded by Advanced LIGO detectors [9,10,11] opened a new window on physics and the Universe. To perform such GW astrophysics with very high precision in the context of ground-based GW detectors, including Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo [12] and KAGRA [13,14] as well as planned space-based GW detectors such as LISA [15] and (B-)DECIGO [16,17], it is now crucial to have extremely accurate predictions of GWs emitted from BBHs to maximize the extraction of physical information from noisy GW signals through the well-known technique of matched filtering; cross correlating the noisy detector output with the theoretical GW waveforms for the expected GW signal (see, e.g., [18] for the algorithm used by LIGO Scientific Collaboration).…”

A recipe for echoes from exotic compact objects

“…Observations of black holes are undergoing a revolution, with the advent of gravitational wave astronomy [2][3][4][5] and the promise of very-longbaseline radio observations of supermassive black holes by the Event Horizon Telescope [6,7]. While black holes are consistent with all electromagnetic and gravitational wave observations to date [4,5,[8][9][10], no experiment has been able probe spacetime near the event horizon [11][12][13]. Moreover, the event horizon is at the heart of the BH information paradox [14], and the role of black holes in a quantum theory of gravity is an open question.…”

Investigating the Poor Match among Different Precessing Gravitational Waveforms

“…Recently, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration, based on data acquired by the Advanced LIGO [2] and Advanced Virgo [3] detectors, have announced detections of gravitational waves from coalescing stellar mass black hole binaries [4][5][6][7][8][9] and a neutron star binary [10]. This opened up the era of gravitational wave astronomy.…”