Upper limits on the rates of binary neutron star and neutron-star--black-hole mergers from Advanced LIGO's first observing run

By The Ligo Scientific Collaboration, T. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. Abbott, M. Abernathy, F. Acernese, K. Ackley, C. Adams, T. Adams, P. Addesso and 949 more. 2016

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report here the non-detection of gravitational waves from the merger of binary neutron star systems and neutron-star--black-hole systems during the first observing run of Advanced LIGO. In particular we searched for gravitational wave signals from binary neutron star systems with component masses $\in [1,3] M_{\odot}$ and component dimensionless spins $<0.05$. We also searched for neutron-star--black-hole systems with the same neutron star parameters, black hole mass $\in [2,99] M_{\odot}$ and no restriction on the black hole spin magnitude. We assess the sensitivity of the two LIGO detectors to these systems, and find that they could have detected the merger of binary neutron star systems with component mass distributions of $1.35\pm0.13 M_{\odot}$ at a volume-weighted average distance of $\sim$ 70Mpc, and for neutron-star--black-hole systems with neutron star masses of $1.4M_\odot$ and black hole masses of at least $5M_\odot$, a volume-weighted average distance of at least $\sim$ 110Mpc. From this we constrain with 90% confidence the merger rate to be less than 12,600 Gpc$^{-3}$yr$^{-1}$ for binary-neutron star systems and less than 3,600 Gpc$^{-3}$yr$^{-1}$ for neutron-star--black-hole systems. We find that if no detection of neutron-star binary mergers is made in the next two Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo observing runs we would place significant constraints on the merger rates. Finally, assuming a rate of $10^{+20}_{-7}$Gpc$^{-3}$yr$^{-1}$ short gamma ray bursts beamed towards the Earth and assuming that all short gamma-ray bursts have binary-neutron-star (neutron-star--black-hole) progenitors we can use our 90% confidence rate upper limits to constrain the beaming angle of the gamma-ray burst to be greater than ${2.3^{+1.7}_{-1.1}}^{\circ}$ (${4.3^{+3.1}_{-1.9}}^{\circ}$).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1448b230c5765150c30d502d94fd59b247869a8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. E. Quataert
3. P. Hopkins
4. E. Berger
5. Michela Mapelli
6. L. Hernquist
7. Volker Springel
8. D. Kasen

Citations in the corpus

• Detecting Binary Compact-object Mergers with Gravitational Waves: Understanding and Improving the Sensitivity of the PyCBC Search (2017, methodology): “However, the noise distributions in real data are quite different across different templates and between different detectors (Abbott et al. 2016d).”
• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics ( ): Convective Boundaries, Element Diffusion, and Massive Star Explosions (2017, background): “…new era, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has demonstrated the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems (Abbott et al. 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2017a, 2017b) and continues to monitor the sky with broadband detectors for gravitational waves from compact…”
• Eccentric Black Hole Gravitational-wave Capture Sources in Galactic Nuclei: Distribution of Binary Parameters (2017, background): “…additional GW detectors are planned to join the network of aLIGO and AdV: (i) the Japanese KAGRA5 is under construction, with baseline operations beginning in 2018 (Somiya 2012); while (ii) the proposed LIGO-India6 is expected to become operational in 2022 (Iyer et al. 2011; Abbott et al. 2016e).”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. II. UV, Optical, and Near-infrared Light Curves and Comparison to Kilonova Models (2017, background): “The era of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy began on 2015 September 14 when the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)made the first direct detection of gravitational waves, resulting from the merger of a stellar mass binary black hole (BBH; GW150914; Abbott et al. 2016”
• The progenitors of compact-object binaries: impact of metallicity, common envelope and natal kicks (2018, background): “Especially at low metallicity (0.0002≤ Z ≤ 0.0012), the mass distribution is broadly consistent with a power law with slope ≈ 2.3, in good agreement with the one inferred from GW events (Abbott et al. 2016a).”
• 1-OGC: The First Open Gravitational-wave Catalog of Binary Mergers from Analysis of Public Advanced LIGO Data (2018, methodology): “We independently verify the discovery of GW150914 and GW151226 and report an improved significance of the candidate event LVT151012, which we claim should be viewed as a confident detection.”
• Impact of ejecta morphology and composition on the electromagnetic signatures of neutron star mergers (2017, background): “…electromagnetic counterparts would provide crucial information to localize the astrophysical environments of gravitational wave signals (Metzger & Berger 2012; Nissanke et al. 2013; Piran et al. 2013; Singer et al. 2014; Chu et al. 2015; Ghosh et al. 2015; Bartos et al. 2016; Abbott et al. 2016a).”
• The cosmic merger rate of neutron stars and black holes (2018, methodology): “Similarly, Kruckow et al. (2018) obtain a local DNS merger rate density of only ∼ 10 Gpc−3 yr−1 for their fiducial model and a strong upper limit to the local DNS merger rate of ∼ 400 Gpc−3 yr−1.”
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways (2020, methodology): “…progenitor systems, such as the types of galactic environments they were born in and their formation processes, the complex stellar evolution that persisted throughout their lives, and the physics of the supernovae that marked their deaths (Abbott et al. 2016a; Mandel & Farmer 2018; Vitale 2020).”
• GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs (2018, methodology): “Hence, we take an approach similar to previous analyses [208] and examine specific points in the mass space while considering two component spin configurations: isotropic and orbital angular momentum aligned as described in Sec.”
• The MBTA pipeline for detecting compact binary coalescences in the third LIGO–Virgo observing run (2020, unknown): “541 A155 [4] B. P. Abbott et al. 2016 Astrophys.”