Erratum: Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run [Phys. Rev. X 6 , 041015 (2016)]

By B. Abbott, Ligo Scientific, Virgo Collaborations. Physical Review X, 2018

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We report an error found in the implementation of the code of the LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations (LVC) as used in gravitational-wave-based estimations of possible deviations from the post-Newtonian (PN) terms expected in general relativity. The error concerned the 0.5 PN term and affected the results previously published for GW150914 [1] in Ref. [2], for GW151226 [3] in [4], and for GW170104 in Ref. [5]. We corrected the error and present the reproduced results here, as well as in the respective Refs. [6,7]. The main conclusion, that the results are consistent with general relativity, remains. The test for the parametrized post-Newtonian [8] deviations from the expected GR values relied on creating non-GR waveforms [2,9–13] and using them as potential matches for the observed waveforms [14–17]. In these waveforms, implemented in the frequency domain, freedom was introduced by allowing the phase coefficients describing different powers of the post-Newtonian parameter (equivalently, powers of the frequency) to assume a range of values not only the particular values prescribed by GR. However, a coding bug was introduced, identically zeroing the deviations at 0.5 PN in the inspiral regime (as in GR). Hence, the 0.5 PN deviations were absent in the phasing formula, though not in the junction conditions that relate the inspiral regime to the intermediate regime. Any constraints obtained in Refs. [2,4,5] only resulted from the latter.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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