Properties of the Binary Black Hole Merger GW150914.

By B. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. Abbott, M. Abernathy, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, C. Adams, T. Adams, P. Addesso, R. Adhikari and 490 more. 2016

728 citations recorded by the source corpus.

On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected a gravitational-wave transient (GW150914); we characterize the properties of the source and its parameters. The data around the time of the event were analyzed coherently across the LIGO network using a suite of accurate waveform models that describe gravitational waves from a compact binary system in general relativity. GW150914 was produced by a nearly equal mass binary black hole of masses 36_{-4}^{+5}M_{⊙} and 29_{-4}^{+4}M_{⊙}; for each parameter we report the median value and the range of the 90% credible interval. The dimensionless spin magnitude of the more massive black hole is bound to be <0.7 (at 90% probability). The luminosity distance to the source is 410_{-180}^{+160}  Mpc, corresponding to a redshift 0.09_{-0.04}^{+0.03} assuming standard cosmology. The source location is constrained to an annulus section of 610  deg^{2}, primarily in the southern hemisphere. The binary merges into a black hole of mass 62_{-4}^{+4}M_{⊙} and spin 0.67_{-0.07}^{+0.05}. This black hole is significantly more massive than any other inferred from electromagnetic observations in the stellar-mass regime.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• Generalization in anti-causal learning (2018, methodology): “For example, to estimate the masses and spins of binary black-hole systems from their generated gravitational waves (Abbott et al., 2016), the waveforms for hundreds of thousands parameter settings sampled via MCMC are simulated and then matched with the recorded data.”
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run (2020, methodology): “[177], we assume that the noise can be treated as Gaussian, stationary, and uncorrelated between detectors [63,178] in the stretch of data used to calculate the likelihood and to measure the noise PSD.”
• Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with bilby: validation and application to the first LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue (2020, methodology): “…Belczynski et al. 2018; Bavera et al. 2020), the equation of state of neutron-star matter (Abbott et al. 2018c; Most et al. 2018; Essick et al. 2020; Abbott et al. 2020b), and the nature of gravity (Yunes & Siemens 2013; Abbott et al. 2016b; Yunes et al. 2016; Abbott et al. 2019i; Isi et al. 2019).”
• BPASS predictions for binary black hole mergers (2016, methodology): “Finally, while this paper has been under review the LIGO consortium have announced the detection of a further binary black-hole merger, and undertaken further analysis of a third, low significance event (Abbott et al 2016f).”
• Relativistic Fluid Dynamics in and out of Equilibrium (2017, background): “• 2015: Elliptic flow measured in proton-gold, deuteron-gold and He-gold collisions at RHIC, confirming relativistic viscous hydrodynamics predictions [45] • 2016: Observation of non-hydrodynamic mode ring-down of a black hole through gravitational wave data by LIGO [46, 47]”
• GWTC-2.1: Deep extended catalog of compact binary coalescences observed by LIGO and Virgo during the first half of the third observing run (2021, methodology): “The vast majority of the posterior distributions reported in this section are constructed by combining an equal number of samples drawn from each of the IMRPhenomXPHM and SEOBNRv4PHM analyses [140].”
• The origin of spin in binary black holes (2019, methodology): “Various explanations of different formation channels for merging BBHs have entered into the scientific literature (see, e.g., Abbott et al. 2016a; Miller 2016; Mandel & Farmer 2018, for reviews).”
• Are LIGO's Black Holes Made from Smaller Black Holes? (2017, background): “Because the spins of the BHs in a binary system influence the dynamics of the inspiral and merger, a GW detection provides a measurement of the component spins (Abbott et al. 2016b).”
• MERGING BLACK HOLE BINARIES IN GALACTIC NUCLEI: IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVANCED-LIGO DETECTIONS (2016, background): “Abbott et al. (2016d) did not consider the possibility that BH binaries can be dynamically assembled inside NSCs which we discuss here.”