Have hierarchical three-body mergers been detected by LIGO/Virgo?
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Documents
- slaa123
Final published version, 537 KB, PDF document
One of the proposed channels of binary black holemergers involves dynamical interactions of three black holes. In such scenarios, it is possible that all three black holes merge in a so-called hierarchical merger chain, where two of the black holes merge first and then their remnant subsequently merges with the remaining single black hole. Depending on the dynamical environment, it is possible that both mergers will appear within the observable time window. Here, we perform a search for such merger pairs in the public available LIGO and Virgo data from the O1/O2 runs. Using a frequentist p-value assignment statistics, we do not find any significant merger pair candidates, the most significant being GW170809-GW151012 pair. Assuming no observed candidates in O3/O4, we derive upper limits on merger pairs to be similar to 11-110 yr(-1) Gpc(-3), corresponding to a rate that relative to the total merger rate is similar to 0.1-1.0. From this, we argue that both a detection and a non-detection within the next few years can be used to put useful constraints on some dynamical progenitor models.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Journal | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
Volume | 498 |
Issue number | 1 |
Pages (from-to) | L46-L52 |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISSN | 0035-8711 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 11 Oct 2020 |
- gravitational waves, (transients:) black hole mergers, BLACK-HOLE MERGERS, GLOBULAR-CLUSTERS, EVOLUTION, BINARIES, CATALOG, TESTS, LIGO
Research areas
Links
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.12346.pdf
Submitted manuscript
Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk
ID: 252878140