The Formation and Gravitational-Wave Detection of Massive Stellar Black Hole Binaries

Belczyński, Krzysztof; Buonanno, A.; Cantiello, Matteo; Fryer, Chris L.; Holz, D. E.; Mandel, Ilya; Miller, M. Coleman; Walczak, M.

doi:10.1088/0004-637x/789/2/120

Cited by 138 publications

(143 citation statements)

References 119 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

140

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The minimum black hole mass is taken to be 2M ⊙ , consistent with the largest known masses of neutron stars [77]. There is no known maximum black hole mass [78]; however, we limit this template bank to binaries with a total mass less than M ≤ 100M ⊙ . For higher-mass binaries, the Advanced LIGO detectors are sensitive to only the final few cycles of inspiral plus merger, making the analysis more susceptible to noise transients.…”

Section: Search Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run

Abbott¹,

Abbott²,

Abbott³

et al. 2016

Phys. Rev. X

1,234

1,383

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

the first detections of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers. In this paper, we present full results from a search for binary black hole merger signals with total masses up to 100M ⊙ and detailed implications from our observations of these systems. Our search, based on general-relativistic * Full author list given at the end of the article. † Deceased.Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGERS IN THE FIRST …PHYS. REV. X 6, 041015 (2016) 041015-5 models of gravitational-wave signals from binary black hole systems, unambiguously identified two signals, GW150914 and GW151226, with a significance of greater than 5σ over the observing period. It also identified a third possible signal, LVT151012, with substantially lower significance and with an 87% probability of being of astrophysical origin. We provide detailed estimates of the parameters of the observed systems. Both GW150914 and GW151226 provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the two-body motion of a compact-object binary in the large velocity, highly nonlinear regime. We do not observe any deviations from general relativity, and we place improved empirical bounds on several highorder post-Newtonian coefficients. From our observations, we infer stellar-mass binary black hole merger rates lying in the range 9-240 Gpc −3 yr −1 . These observations are beginning to inform astrophysical predictions of binary black hole formation rates and indicate that future observing runs of the Advanced detector network will yield many more gravitational-wave detections.

show abstract

Section: Search Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run

Abbott¹,

Abbott²,

Abbott³

et al. 2016

Phys. Rev. X

1,234

1,383

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We then marginalize over binary orientation and sky location to determine what fraction of sources at a given chirp mass and redshift yield an SNR > 8. This approach is identical to that found in [19]. Note that we have assumed all binary components have equal masses in order to simplify the integral.…”

Section: Detection Ratementioning

confidence: 98%

Binary Black Hole Mergers from Globular Clusters: Implications for Advanced LIGO

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The predicted rate of binary black hole mergers from galactic fields can vary over several orders of magnitude and is extremely sensitive to the assumptions of stellar evolution. But in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters, binary black holes form by well-understood gravitational interactions. In this letter, we study the formation of black hole binaries in an extensive collection of realistic globular cluster models. By comparing these models to observed Milky Way and extragalactic globular clusters, we find that the mergers of dynamically-formed binaries could be detected at a rate of ∼ 100 per year, potentially dominating the binary black hole merger rate. We also find that a majority of cluster-formed binaries are more massive than their field-formed counterparts, suggesting that Advanced LIGO could identify certain binaries as originating from dense stellar environments.

show abstract

“…Following Belczynski et al (2014) and Rodriguez et al (2015), we write the detection rate per unit chirp mass as…”

Section: Appendix B Gravitational-wave Detectabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamical Formation of the Gw150914 Binary Black Hole

Rodriguez

Haster

Chatterjee

et al. 2016

ApJL

229

176

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We explore the possibility that GW150914, the binary black hole (BBH) merger recently detected by Advanced LIGO, was formed by gravitational interactions in the core of a dense star cluster. Using models of globular clusters (GCs) with detailed N-body dynamics and stellar evolution, we show that a typical cluster with a mass ofis optimal for forming GW150914-like BBHs that will merge in the local universe. We identify the most likely dynamical processes for forming GW150914 in such a cluster, and we show that the detection of GW150914 is consistent with the masses and merger rates expected for BBHs from GCs. Our results show that dynamical processes provide a significant and well-understood pathway for forming BBH mergers in the local universe. Understanding the contribution of dynamics to the BBH merger problem is a critical step in unlocking the full potential of gravitational-wave astronomy.

show abstract

The Formation and Gravitational-Wave Detection of Massive Stellar Black Hole Binaries

Cited by 138 publications

References 119 publications

Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run

Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run

Binary Black Hole Mergers from Globular Clusters: Implications for Advanced LIGO

Dynamical Formation of the Gw150914 Binary Black Hole

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About