GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of 150 M ⊙
Author(s)
LIGO Scientific Collaboration; Virgo Collaboration; Barsotti, Lisa; Biscans, Sebastien; Biscoveanu, Sylvia; Buikema, Aaron; Demos, Nicholas; Donovan, Frederick J; Eisenstein, Robert Alan; Evans, Matthew J; Fernandez Galiana, Alvaro-Miguel; Fritschel, Peter K; Ganapathy, Dhruva; Gras, Slawomir; Hall, E. D.; Haster, Carl-Johan; Huang, Y.; Isi Banales, Maximiliano S; Katsavounidis, Erotokritos; Knyazev, E.; Lane, B. B.; Lanza Jr, Robert K; Lanza Jr, Robert K; London, L. T.; MacInnis, Myron E; Mansell, Georgia; Mason, Kenneth R; Massinger, Thomas J.; Matichard, Fabrice; Mavalvala, Nergis; McCuller, Lee P; Mittleman, Richard K; Mo, Geoffrey; Ray Pitambar Mohapatra, Satyanarayan; Ng, Kwan Yeung; Noh, Minkyun; Shoemaker, David H; Sudhir, Vivishek; Tse, Maggie; Vitale, Salvatore; Weiss, Rainer; Whittle, Christopher Mark; Yu, Hang; Yu, Haocun; Zucker, Michael E; ... Show more Show less
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© 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. On May 21, 2019 at 03:02:29 UTC Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo observed a short duration gravitational-wave signal, GW190521, with a three-detector network signal-to-noise ratio of 14.7, and an estimated false-alarm rate of 1 in 4900 yr using a search sensitive to generic transients. If GW190521 is from a quasicircular binary inspiral, then the detected signal is consistent with the merger of two black holes with masses of 85-14+21 Mm and 66-18+17 Mm (90% credible intervals). We infer that the primary black hole mass lies within the gap produced by (pulsational) pair-instability supernova processes, with only a 0.32% probability of being below 65 Mm. We calculate the mass of the remnant to be 142-16+28 Mm, which can be considered an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH). The luminosity distance of the source is 5.3-2.6+2.4 Gpc, corresponding to a redshift of 0.82-0.34+0.28. The inferred rate of mergers similar to GW190521 is 0.13-0.11+0.30 Gpc-3 yr-1.
Date issued
2020Department
LIGO (Observatory : Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics; MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space ResearchJournal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)