Search for gravitational waves from binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown

Abstract

We present the first modeled search for gravitational waves using the complete binary black-hole gravitational waveform from inspiral through the merger and ringdown for binaries with negligible component spin. We searched approximately 2 years of LIGO data, taken between November 2005 and September 2007, for systems with component masses of 1–99M⊙ [1-99 M circled dot operator] and total masses of 25–100M⊙ [25-100 M circled dot operator]. We did not detect any plausible gravitational-wave signals but we do place upper limits on the merger rate of binary black holes as a function of the component masses in this range. We constrain the rate of mergers for 19M⊙≤m1 [19 M circled dot operator greater than or equal to m subscript 1], m2≤28M⊙ [m subscript 2 greater than or equal to 28 M circled dot operator] binary black-hole systems with negligible spin to be no more than 2.0 Mpc-3 {Mpc superscript -3] Myr-1 [Myr superscript -1] at 90% confidence.