DYNAMICAL FORMATION OF THE GW150914 BINARY BLACK HOLE

By C. Rodriguez, C. Haster, S. Chatterjee, Vicky Kalogera, F. Rasio. 2016

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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 of 3 × 10 5 M ⊙ to 6 × 10 5 M ⊙ is 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.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0a52edd648e1f0a62ed4103d3c5d192f85f0d3eb

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Citations in the corpus

Solving puzzles of GW150914 by primordial black holes (2016, background): “However, the dynamical formation of double massive BHs with misaligned spins in dense stellar clusters is still possible [8, 9].”
Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “Many potential formation channels in the literature(Belczynski et al. 2014; Antonini & Rasio 2016; Inayoshi et al. 2016; Mandel & de Mink 2016; Rodriguez et al. 2016b; Bartos et al. 2017; Mapelli et al. 2017; Kruckow et al. 2018) produce event rates that are compatible with those from the previous…”
Black Hole Mergers From Globular Clusters Observable by LISA I: Eccentric Sources Originating From Relativistic N-body Dynamics (2018, background): “…and the three objects form a hierarchical triple ⋆ jsamsing@princeton.edu; daniel.dorazio@cfa.harvard.edu (e.g., Liu & Lai 2017; Antonini et al. 2017), whereas BBH mergers forming in clusters are expected to have randomized orientations due to frequent exchanges (e.g., Rodriguez et al. 2016c).”
Constraining Stellar-mass Black Hole Mergers in AGN Disks Detectable with LIGO (2017, background): “…and in globular clusters (Breen & Heggie 2013; Rodriguez et al. 2016a, 2018; Wang et al. 2016), they are more likely to form in regions with concentrations of BHs, such as galactic nuclear star clusters (Hopman & Alexander 2006; O’Leary et al. 2009; Antonini & Rasio 2016; Rodriguez et al. 2016b).”
Measuring the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum with an Astrophysically Motivated Parameterization (2018, background): “Current theories include: most binary black holes are formed dynamically (Rodriguez et al. 2016a, 2017), black holes are subject to large natal kicks (Rodriguez et al. 2016b; O’Shaughnessy et al. 2017), and/or that large black holes do not form with significant dimensionless spins (Belczynski et…”
Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “The other four LIGO events need low metallicities (see lower panel) to obtain their larger BH masses, as also concluded by many other studies (e.g. Belczynski et al. 2016; Eldridge & Stanway 2016; Rodriguez et al. 2016b; Stevenson et al. 2017a).”
Are LIGO's Black Holes Made from Smaller Black Holes? (2017, background): “If the BHs of each generation interact with each other dynamically, they are more likely to form binaries with BHs of similar mass (Sigurdsson & Hernquist 1993; Rodriguez et al. 2016b) and we would expect mergers of near-equal mass BHs (Rodriguez et al. 2016a; O’Leary et al. 2016).”
Evolutionary roads leading to low effective spins, high black hole masses, and O1/O2 rates for LIGO/Virgo binary black holes (2017, background): “…different spin-orbit misalignment distributions, with dynamical formation generating nearly isotropic distributions (Mandel & O’Shaughnessy 2010; Rodriguez et al. 2016b), while binary evolution favors distributions that show mostly small to moderate misalignments, with only a small fraction of…”
Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run (2016, result): “All of these channels have been shown to be consistent with the GW150914 discovery [178–186].”
The spin of the second-born black hole in coalescing binary black holes (2018, background): “…2016; Marchant et al. 2016; Mandel & de Mink 2016; Song et al. 2016), and (ii) dynamical formation in globular clusters (Sigurdsson & Hernquist 1993; Rodriguez et al. 2015, 2016) and galactic nuclear clusters (Miller & Lauburg 2009; O’Leary et al. 2009; Kocsis & Levin 2012; Petrovich & Antonini…”
Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and their role in gravitational-wave generation (2016, background): “The overall conclusion of such studies is that the dynamical BBH inspiral rate is ≈ 5−10 yr−1 Gpc−3, which would contribute to the detection of several 10s of BBH inspriral per year with the Advanced LIGO, given its proposed full sensitivity (Banerjee et al. 2010; Rodriguez et al. 2016a).”
Eccentric Black Hole Gravitational-wave Capture Sources in Galactic Nuclei: Distribution of Binary Parameters (2017, methodology): “…binary formation and evolution channels typically produce binaries with eccentricities at or below 10−3 when their GW signals enter the aLIGO band (Kowalska et al. 2011; Cholis et al. 2016; Rodriguez et al. 2016a, 2016b; Samsing & Ramirez-Ruiz 2017; Silsbee & Tremaine 2017; Randall & Xianyu 2018a).”
N-body modelling of globular clusters: masses, mass-to-light ratios and intermediate-mass black holes (2016, background): “…important environments for the creation of tight black hole binaries which merge through the emission of gravitational waves (Banerjee, Baumgardt & Kroupa ⋆ E-mail: h.baumgardt@uq.edu.au 2010; Downing et al. 2011; Rodriguez, Chatterjee & Rasio 2016; Rodriguez et al. 2016; Askar et al. 2016).”
MERGING BLACK HOLE BINARIES IN GALACTIC NUCLEI: IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVANCED-LIGO DETECTIONS (2016, methodology): “This rate appears to be somewhat comparable to the upper end of the expected detection rate from stellar clusters (Rodriguez et al. 2016a).”