Astrophysical Implications of GW190412 as a Remnant of a Previous Black-Hole Merger
Name
PhysRevLett.125.101103.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.2 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ea60ff285e61bd99c7ba4a87c9bca77f
Author(s)
Gerosa, Davide
Vitale, Salvatore
Berti, Emanuele
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2020 American Physical Society. Two of the dominant channels to produce merging stellar-mass black-hole binaries are believed to be the isolated evolution of binary stars in the field and dynamical formation in star clusters. The first reported black-hole binary event from the third LIGO/Virgo observing run (GW190412) is unusual in that it has unequal masses, nonzero effective spin, and nonzero primary spin at 90% confidence interval. We show that this event should be exceedingly rare in the context of both the field and cluster formation scenarios. Interpreting GW190412 as a remnant of a previous black-hole merger provides a promising route to explain its features. If GW190412 indeed formed hierarchically, we show that the region of the parameter space that is best motivated from an astrophysical standpoint (low natal spins and light clusters) cannot accommodate the observation. We analyze public GW190412 LIGO/Virgo data with a Bayesian prior where the more massive black hole resulted from a previous merger and find that this interpretation is equally supported by the data. If the heavier component of GW190412 is indeed a merger remnant, then its spin magnitude is χ1=0.56-0.21+0.19, which is higher than the value previously reported by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration.
MIT Department
LIGO (Observatory : Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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DOI of Published Version
10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.125.101103
https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.125.101103
