Constraining Stellar-mass Black Hole Mergers in AGN Disks Detectable with LIGO
By B. McKernan, K. Ford, J. Bellovary, N. Leigh, Zoltán Haiman, B. Kocsis, Wladimir Lyra, M. Mac Low, B. Metzger, M. O’Dowd and 2 more. Astrophysical Journal, 2017
231 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Black hole (BH) mergers detectable with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) can occur in active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks. Here we parameterize the merger rates, the mass spectrum, and the spin spectrum of BHs in AGN disks. The predicted merger rate spans ∼10−3–104 Gpc−1 yr−1, so upper limits from LIGO (<212 Gpc−1 yr−1) already constrain it. The predicted mass spectrum has the form of a broken power law, consisting of a pre-existing BH power-law mass spectrum and a harder power-law mass spectrum resulting from mergers. The predicted spin spectrum is multipeaked with the evolution of retrograde spin BHs in the gas disk playing a key role. We outline the large uncertainties in each of these LIGO observables for this channel and we discuss ways in which they can be constrained in the future.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5941ae51ac29e342088325b8bd974fce397211c9
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
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- Ilya Mandel
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- F. Antonini
- N. Giacobbo
- C. Rodriguez
Citations in the corpus
- GW231123: A Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190–265 M⊙ (2025, unknown): “…2021; Arca Sedda et al. 2021; Kritos et al. 2023; Mahapatra et al. 2025) or the disks of active galactic nuclei (Bartos et al. 2017; Stone et al. 2017; Mckernan et al. 2018; Yang et al. 2019; Tagawa et al. 2020; McKernan et al. 2020; Vac-caro et al. 2024; Arca Sedda et al. 2023b) to be retained.”
- Black Hole Mergers From Globular Clusters Observable by LISA I: Eccentric Sources Originating From Relativistic N-body Dynamics (2018, background): “…(Bird et al. 2016; Cholis et al. 2016; Sasaki et al. 2016; Carr et al. 2016), active galactic nuclei discs (Bartos et al. 2017; Stone et al. 2017; McKernan et al. 2017), galactic nuclei (O’Leary et al. 2009; Hong & Lee 2015; VanLandingham et al. 2016; Antonini & Rasio 2016; Hoang et al. 2017),…”
- Rates of compact object coalescences (2021, background): “Meanwhile, Bellovary et al. (2016); Bartos et al. (2017); Stone et al. (2017); McKernan et al. (2018) emphasised the important role that an accretion disk in an active galactic nucleus could play in enhancing the rate of binary black hole mergers.”