Upper limits on the temperature of inspiraling astrophysical black holes

Abstract

We present a method to constrain the temperature of astrophysical black holes through detecting the inspiral phase of binary black hole coalescences. At sufficient separation, inspiraling black holes can be regarded as isolated objects, hence their temperature can still be defined. Due to their intrinsic radiation, inspiraling black holes lose part of their masses during the inspiral phase. As a result, coalescence speeds up, introducing a correction to the orbital phase. We show that this dephasing may allow us to constrain the temperature of inspiraling black holes through gravitational-wave detection. Using the binary black-hole coalescences of the first two observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors, we constrain the temperature of parental black holes to be less than about $$ 10^9 $$ 10 9 K. Such a constraint corresponds to luminosity of about $$ 10^{-16} M_{\odot }~\mathrm{s}^{-1} $$ 10 - 16 M ⊙ s - 1 for a black hole of $$ 20 M_{\odot } $$ 20 M ⊙ , which is about 20 orders of magnitude below the peak luminosity of the corresponding gravitational-wave event, indicating no evidence for strong quantum-gravity effects through the detection of the inspiral phase.