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Series

2016

General Relativity

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Physics

Binary Black Hole Mergers In The First Advanced Ligo Observing Run, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website. Oct 2016

Binary Black Hole Mergers In The First Advanced Ligo Observing Run, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The first observational run of the Advanced LIGO detectors, from September 12, 2015 to January 19, 2016, saw the first detections of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers. In this paper, we present full results from a search for binary black hole merger signals with total masses up to 100M and detailed implications from our observations of these systems. Our search, based on general-relativistic models of gravitational-wave signals from binary black hole systems, unambiguously identified two signals, GW150914 and GW151226, with a significance of greater than 5σ over the observing period. It also identified a third possible signal, …


Gw151226: Observation Of Gravitational Waves From A 22-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website. Jun 2016

Gw151226: Observation Of Gravitational Waves From A 22-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We report the observation of a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar-mass black holes. The signal, GW151226, was observed by the twin detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) on December 26, 2015 at 03:38:53 UTC. The signal was initially identified within 70 s by an online matched-filter search targeting binary coalescences. Subsequent off-line analyses recovered GW151226 with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13 and a significance greater than 5σ. The signal persisted in the LIGO frequency band for approximately 1 s, increasing in frequency and amplitude over about 55 cycles from 35 to 450 Hz, …


Properties Of The Binary Black Hole Merger Gw150914, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website. Jun 2016

Properties Of The Binary Black Hole Merger Gw150914, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected a gravitational-wave transient (GW150914); we characterize the properties of the source and its parameters. The data around the time of the event were analyzed coherently across the LIGO network using a suite of accurate waveform models that describe gravitational waves from a compact binary system in general relativity. GW150914 was produced by a nearly equal mass binary black hole of masses 36-4+5 M and 29-4+4M; for each parameter we report the median value and the range of the 90% credible interval. …


Tests Of General Relativity With Gw150914, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website. May 2016

Tests Of General Relativity With Gw150914, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The LIGO detection of GW150914 provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the two-body motion of a compact-object binary in the large-velocity, highly nonlinear regime, and to witness the final merger of the binary and the excitation of uniquely relativistic modes of the gravitational field. We carry out several investigations to determine whether GW150914 is consistent with a binary black-hole merger in general relativity. We find that the final remnant's mass and spin, as determined from the low-frequency (inspiral) and high-frequency (postinspiral) phases of the signal, are mutually consistent with the binary black-hole solution in general relativity. Furthermore, the data following …


Observation Of Gravitational Waves From A Binary Black Hole Merger, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website. Feb 2016

Observation Of Gravitational Waves From A Binary Black Hole Merger, Benjamin P. Abbott, Marco Cavaglia, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0x10-21. It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203 000 years, equivalent to a …