Abstract
We report results from a search for gravitational waves produced by perturbed intermediate mass black holes (IMBH) in data collected by LIGO and Virgo between 2005 and 2010. The search was sensitive to astrophysical sources that produced damped sinusoid gravitational wave signals, also known as ringdowns, with frequency 50 ≤ f0/Hz ≤ 2000 and decay timescale 0.0001 ≲ τ/s ≲ 0.1 characteristic of those produced in mergers of IMBH pairs. No significant gravitational wave candidate was detected. We report upper limits on the astrophysical coalescence rates of IMBHs with total binary mass 50 ≤ M/M⊙ ≤ 450 and component mass ratios of either 1:1 or 4:1. For systems with total mass 100 ≤ M/M⊙ ≤ 150, we report a 90% confidence upper limit on the rate of binary IMBH mergers with nonspinning and equal mass components of 6.9 x 10-8Mpc-3yr-1. We also report a rate upper limit for ringdown waveforms from perturbed IMBHs, radiating 1% of their mass as gravitational waves in the fundamental, 𝓁 = 𝓂 = 2, oscillation mode, that is nearly three orders of magnitude more stringent than previous results.
Recommended Citation
J. Aasi et al., "Search for Gravitational Wave Ringdowns from Perturbed Intermediate Mass Black Holes in LIGO-Virgo Data from 2005-2010," Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, vol. 89, no. 10, American Physical Society (APS), May 2014.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.89.102006
Department(s)
Physics
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1550-7998
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2014 American Physical Society (APS), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 May 2014
