Search for Eccentric Binary Black Hole Mergers with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo during Their First and Second Observing Runs
Name
Abbott_2019_ApJ_883_149.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
798.24 KB
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Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
LIGO Scientific Collaboration
Virgo Collaboration
Aggarwal, Nancy
Barnum, Sam
Barsotti, Lisa
Biscans, Sebastien
Biscoveanu, Sylvia
Buikema, Aaron
Demos, Nicholas
Donovan, Frederick J
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. When formed through dynamical interactions, stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) may retain eccentric orbits (e > 0.1 at 10 Hz) detectable by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Eccentricity can therefore be used to differentiate dynamically formed binaries from isolated BBH mergers. Current template-based gravitational-wave searches do not use waveform models associated with eccentric orbits, rendering the search less efficient for eccentric binary systems. Here we present the results of a search for BBH mergers that inspiral in eccentric orbits using data from the first and second observing runs (O1 and O2) of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. We carried out the search with the coherent WaveBurst algorithm, which uses minimal assumptions on the signal morphology and does not rely on binary waveform templates. We show that it is sensitive to binary mergers with a detection range that is weakly dependent on eccentricity for all bound systems. Our search did not identify any new binary merger candidates. We interpret these results in light of eccentric binary formation models. We rule out formation channels with rates ⪆100 Gpc-3 yr-1 for e > 0.1, assuming a black hole mass spectrum with a power-law index ≲2.
MIT Department
LIGO (Observatory : Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/AB3C2D
