GW190425: Observation of a Compact Binary Coalescence with Total Mass $\sim 3.4 M_{\odot}$

By ∼. 3.4M, B. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. Abbott, S. Abraham, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, C. Adams, Rana X. Adhikari, V. Adya and 183 more. 2020

1,231 citations recorded by the source corpus.

On 2019 April 25, the LIGO Livingston detector observed a compact binary coalescence with signal-to-noise ratio 12.9. The Virgo detector was also taking data that did not contribute to detection due to a low signal-to-noise ratio, but were used for subsequent parameter estimation. The 90% credible intervals for the component masses range from 1.12 to 2.52 $M_{\odot}$ (1.45 to 1.88 $M_{\odot}$ if we restrict the dimensionless component spin magnitudes to be smaller than 0.05). These mass parameters are consistent with the individual binary components being neutron stars. However, both the source-frame chirp mass $1.44^{+0.02}_{-0.02} M_{\odot}$ and the total mass $3.4^{+0.3}_{-0.1}\,M_{\odot}$ of this system are significantly larger than those of any other known binary neutron star system. The possibility that one or both binary components of the system are black holes cannot be ruled out from gravitational-wave data. We discuss possible origins of the system based on its inconsistency with the known Galactic binary neutron star population. Under the assumption that the signal was produced by a binary neutron star coalescence, the local rate of neutron star mergers is updated to $250-2810 \text{Gpc}^{-3}\text{yr}^{-1}$.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/73451fadf4e0e4767e130f17cbd21496b219097a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michela Mapelli
2. Ilya Mandel
3. D. Holz
4. N. Giacobbo
5. Maya Fishbach
6. Mario Spera
7. F. Antonini
8. Luca Baiotti

Citations in the corpus

• Rates of compact object coalescences (2021, methodology): “Allowing for the variation of the merger rate with redshift (but not yet of the mass distribution with redshift, although some theoretical models predict this) further shifts the binary black hole merger rate at redshift z = 0 (Abbott et al., 2020f).”
• Constraints on the Cosmic Expansion History from GWTC–3 (2021, background): “In these cases (for example GW190814), the posterior is dominated by the in-catalog likelihood terms and hence exhibit a weak dependence on the population assumptions.”
• Challenges and opportunities of gravitational-wave searches at MHz to GHz frequencies (2020, methodology): “As an alternative of using uncertain theoretical predictions, one can instead infer from LIGO/Virgo observations an upper bound on the primordial BH merging rate of s 1:2 104yr 1Gpc 3 at mPBH 2:5M (Abbott et al. 2020) and of s 50yr 1Gpc 3 at masses between 10M and 50M (Abbott et al. 2019a).”
• 4-OGC: Catalog of Gravitational Waves from Compact Binary Mergers (2021, background): “This period has seen continued improvement in their astrophysical reach over their three completed observing runs (O1–O3; Abbott et al. 2020b), with the pace rapidly increasing from three merger observations in O1 to dozens in the first half of O3 (O3a; Abbott et al. 2019a, 2021a, 2021c; Venumadhav…”
• Open Data from the Third Observing Run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO (2023, methodology): “An overview of LIGO / Virgo detector noise and some applicable signal processing methods are described in Abbott et al. ( 2020c ) ; see also above in Sections 3.2 and 2.3 for a brief introduction to various classes of detector noise.”
• Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with bilby: validation and application to the first LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue (2020, background): “The third observing run may yield O(102) additional observations (Abbott et al. 2018b), with a second binary neutron star merger signal already confirmed (Abbott et al. 2020c) and an additional binary black hole merger (Abbott et al. 2020a).”
• Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ Compact Object and a Neutron Star (2024, methodology): “We follow the procedure introduced in the context of GW190814 (Abbott et al. 2020c; Essick & Landry 2020), which relied on only the maximum neutron star mass, and has subsequently been extended to include the effects of spin (Abbott et al. 2020c, 2021a, 2023b).”
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways (2020, methodology): “…2019; Powell et al. 2019; Arca Sedda et al. 2020; Baibhav et al. 2020; Safarzadeh 2020; Kimball et al. 2020a; Farmer et al. 2020; Bouffanais et al. 2020; Roulet et al. 2020; Hall et al. 2020; Antonini & Gieles 2020a; Abbott et al. 2020c; Bavera et al. 2020a; Wong et al. 2020; Kimball et al. 2020b).”