http://arxiv.org/abs/1912.10533
Gravitational wave measurements provide the most robust constraints on the mass of astrophysical black holes. Using state-of-the-art parameter estimation techniques and gravitational waveform models, we infer the source parameters of the loudest marginal trigger, 170502, found in LIGO from 2015-2017. If this trigger is assumed to be a binary black hole merger, we find it corresponds to a total mass in the source frame of $157^{+55}{-41}~\rm{M}\odot$. This is a factor of $\sim3/2$ higher than that of the heaviest confirmed detection, GW170729. The primary and secondary black hole masses are constrained to $94^{+44}{-28}~\rm{M}{\odot}$ and $62^{+30}{-25}~\rm{M}{\odot}$ respectively with 90% confidence. We find $\chi_\mathrm{eff}= 0.49^{+0.31}{-0.63}$, the effective spin aligned with the total angular momentum vector, which has most of its support at larger values than the other O1/O2 events. Further, we find the inclusion of higher order harmonics narrows the confidence region for the total binary mass by 10%. Our study illustrates the necessary techniques for inferring the physical parameters of intermediate mass black hole binary candidates $(\gtrsim 100~\mathrm{M}\odot)$ in the current gravitational wave network.
R. Udall, K. Jani, J. Lange, et. al.
Tue, 24 Dec 19
51/79
Comments: 6 pages, 3 figures; submitted to ApJL
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