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Black holes

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Illustris-Tng Simulated Central Black Mass(Mbh) And Galaxy Properties Correlations With A Machine Learning Approach, Imani L. Dindy Jun 2024

Illustris-Tng Simulated Central Black Mass(Mbh) And Galaxy Properties Correlations With A Machine Learning Approach, Imani L. Dindy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Observationaly it is well established that the masses of central black holes are tightly correlated with galaxy properties, most notably the bulge’s velocity dispersion. Cosmolog- ical hydrodynamical simulations can capture most of these correlations, but it is yet not understood why this occurs. To gain greater insight into central black hole growth we use machine learning algorithms to study the relationship between central black hole mass(MBH) and other galaxy properties at z=0 in the TNG simulations. We find that the central black hole mass can be accurately predicted with just a few galaxy properties only if the central black hole …


The Black-To-White Hole Transition, Farshid Soltani Apr 2024

The Black-To-White Hole Transition, Farshid Soltani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Classically, an isolated black hole is a stable gravitational object. If however semiclassical effects are taken into account, an isolated black hole can be shown to slowly radiate its mass away in a process called evaporation. At the end of the evaporation process, when the size of the horizon becomes Planckian, the quantum nature of the gravitational field can no longer be neglected and the dynamics of the horizon is governed by quantum gravity. The main objective of this thesis is the systematic investigation of a tentative scenario for the “end of the life” of a black hole: the black-to-white …


Ultradeep Atca Imaging Of 47 Tucanae Reveals A Central Compact Radio Source, Alessandro Paduano, Arash Bahramian, James C. A. Miller-Jones, Adela Kawka, Tim J. Galvin, Liliana E. Rivera Sandoval, Sebastian Kamann, Jay Strader, Laura Chomiuk, Craig O. Heinke Jan 2024

Ultradeep Atca Imaging Of 47 Tucanae Reveals A Central Compact Radio Source, Alessandro Paduano, Arash Bahramian, James C. A. Miller-Jones, Adela Kawka, Tim J. Galvin, Liliana E. Rivera Sandoval, Sebastian Kamann, Jay Strader, Laura Chomiuk, Craig O. Heinke

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present the results of an ultradeep radio continuum survey, containing ∼480 hr of observations, of the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. This comprehensive coverage of the cluster allows us to reach rms noise levels of 1.19 μJy beam−1 at 5.5 GHz, 940 nJy beam−1 at 9 GHz, and 790 nJy beam−1 in a stacked 7.25 GHz image. This is the deepest radio image of a globular cluster and the deepest image ever made with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. We identify ATCA J002405.702-720452.361, a faint (6.3 ± 1.2 μJy at 5.5 …


Cosmology, Lensing, And Modified Gravity With Gravitational Waves, Ignacio Magana Hernandez May 2023

Cosmology, Lensing, And Modified Gravity With Gravitational Waves, Ignacio Magana Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Since the first detection of gravitational waves (GWs) from the merger of two stellar-mass black holes in 2015, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has accumulated over 90 observations of mergers involving neutron stars and black holes. With the upcoming observing runs for the LVK network of GW detectors, many more binary mergers are expected to be detected. The increasing size of gravitational wave catalogs has enabled the study of their population, its cosmic expansion history, signatures of gravitational wave lensing, and how well these observations agree with general relativity. In this dissertation, I will discuss my contributions to gravitational wave cosmology. …


Properties Of Slicing Conditions For Charged Black Holes, Sean E. Li Jan 2023

Properties Of Slicing Conditions For Charged Black Holes, Sean E. Li

Honors Projects

We consider an earlier analysis by Baumgarte and de Oliveira (2022) of static Bona-Massó slices of stationary, nonrotating, uncharged black holes, represented by Schwarzschild spacetimes, and generalize that approach to Reissner-Nordström (RN) spacetimes, representing stationary, nonrotating black holes that carry a nonzero charge. This charge is parametrized by the charge-to-mass ratio λQ/M, where M is the black-hole mass and the charge Q may represent electrical charge or act as a placeholder for extensions of general relativity. We use a height-function approach to construct time-independent, spherically symmetric slices that satisfy a so-called Bona-Massó slicing condition. We …


Generating Light Curves From Simulated Active Galactic Nuclei Data, William Yuan Aug 2022

Generating Light Curves From Simulated Active Galactic Nuclei Data, William Yuan

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are growing supermassive black holes found at the centers of massive galaxies. My research involves gathering data by simulating the light emitted by AGN, and then plotting the simulated light in the form of light curves.


Data-Driven Population Inference From Gravitational-Wave Sources And Electromagnetic Counterparts, Siddharth Mohite Aug 2022

Data-Driven Population Inference From Gravitational-Wave Sources And Electromagnetic Counterparts, Siddharth Mohite

Theses and Dissertations

Gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy has presented an unprecedented way to view the universe and study populations of astrophysical objects such as merging compact binaries containing black holes (BHs) and neutron stars (NSs). With the latest catalog of observations detected by the Advanced LIGO-Virgo detector network, recent analyses are placing interesting constraints on the population of BHs and NSs in these binaries. In particular, we are learning a great deal about how these binaries are distributed as a function of their masses. Another aspect of GW astronomy that has the potential to provide insights into fundamental physics is the multi-messenger follow up …


Probing The Inner Structure Of Active Galactic Nuclei Through Reverberation Mapping, Viraja Chandrashekhar Khatu Jun 2022

Probing The Inner Structure Of Active Galactic Nuclei Through Reverberation Mapping, Viraja Chandrashekhar Khatu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the centres of massive galaxies, active galactic nuclei (AGN) are supermassive black holes, surrounded by an accretion disk of ionized gas, that release tremendous energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Because AGN are unresolved through telescopes, we employ reverberation mapping (RM) to study their structure. RM capitalizes on the fact that AGN are variable – the continuum emission from the accretion disk varies, and surrounding gas (in the broad-line region, BLR) responds to those variations with a positive time lag. RM translates the measured time lag into a size of the BLR. Combined with gas velocities (measured from …


Electromagnetic Detectability Of Binary Supermassive Black Holes, Kaylee Grace May 2022

Electromagnetic Detectability Of Binary Supermassive Black Holes, Kaylee Grace

Honors Scholar Theses

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries can be produced by galaxy mergers and are important sources of gravitational waves. Although several binary candidates have been identified in previous work, none have yet been fully confirmed. These pairs are difficult to detect, since single accreting SMBHs can have pseudo-periodic lightcurves due to stochastic noise that can mimic the signature of binary SMBHs. The aforementioned lightcurves are the detections we classify as ”false-positive.” The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) will be a powerful new tool for detecting binary SMBHs. We determine the false-positive binary detection rate for VRO by attempting to recover sinusoidal binary …


Trapped Surfaces, Topology Of Black Holes, And The Positive Mass Theorem, Lan-Hsuan Huang, Dan A. Lee Jan 2022

Trapped Surfaces, Topology Of Black Holes, And The Positive Mass Theorem, Lan-Hsuan Huang, Dan A. Lee

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.


Critical Phenomena In The Gravitational Collapse Of Electromagnetic Dipole And Quadrupole Waves, Maria F. Perez Mendoza Jan 2021

Critical Phenomena In The Gravitational Collapse Of Electromagnetic Dipole And Quadrupole Waves, Maria F. Perez Mendoza

Honors Projects

We report on critical phenomena in the gravitational collapse of electromagnetic waves. Generalizing earlier results that focused on dipole electromagnetic waves, we here compare with quadrupole waves in axisymmetry. We perform numerical simulations of dipole and quadrupole wave initial data, fine-tuning both sets of data to the onset of black hole formation in order to study the critical solution and related critical phenomena. We observe that different multipole moments have different symmetries, indicating that the critical solution for electromagnetic waves cannot be unique, at least not globally. This is confirmed in our numerical simulations: while dipole data lead to a …


Measurements And Mitigation Of Scattered Light Noise In Ligo, Corey Daniel Austin Nov 2020

Measurements And Mitigation Of Scattered Light Noise In Ligo, Corey Daniel Austin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Advanced LIGO (aLIGO) detectors use 1064 nm lasers to measure the tiny fluctuations in spacetime that occur when gravitational waves pass through the earth. LIGO makes use of advanced coating methods and materials to limit the amount of light that scatters from the main beam, but some amount of light does scatter. This stray light can interact with surfaces inside the interferometer that are not seismically isolated and then recombine with the main beam, introducing excess noise into the gravitational wave channel. This thesis reviews the methods for modeling scattered light with ray tracing software and analytical models, for …


Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Testing Ejecta Models For High Mass-Ratios, Allen Murray Aug 2020

Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Testing Ejecta Models For High Mass-Ratios, Allen Murray

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Neutron stars are extremely dense stellar corpses which sometimes exist in orbiting pairs known as binary neutron star (BNS) systems. The mass ratio (q) of a BNS system is defined as the mass of the heavier neutron star divided by the mass of the lighter neutron star. Over time the neutron stars will inspiral toward one another and produce a merger event. Although rare, these events can be rich sources of observational data due to their many electromagnetic emissions as well as the gravitational waves they produce. The ability to extract physical information from such observations relies heavily on numerical …


A Mildly Relativistic Outflow From The Energentic, Fast-Rising Blue Optical Transient Css161010 In A Dwarf Galaxy, Deanne L. Coppejans, R. Margutti, G. Terreran, A. J. Nayana, E. R. Coughlin, T. Laskar, K. D. Alexander, M. Bietenholz, D. Caprioli, P. Chandra, M. R. Drout, D. Frederiks, C. Frohmaier, K. H. Hurley, C. S. Kochanek, M. Macleod, A. Meisner, P. E. Nugent, A. Ridnaia, D. J. Sand, D. Svinkin, C. Ward, S. Yang, A. Baldeschi, I. V. Chilingarian, Y. Dong, C. Esquivia, W. Fong, C. Guidorzi, P. Lundqvist, D. Milisavljevic May 2020

A Mildly Relativistic Outflow From The Energentic, Fast-Rising Blue Optical Transient Css161010 In A Dwarf Galaxy, Deanne L. Coppejans, R. Margutti, G. Terreran, A. J. Nayana, E. R. Coughlin, T. Laskar, K. D. Alexander, M. Bietenholz, D. Caprioli, P. Chandra, M. R. Drout, D. Frederiks, C. Frohmaier, K. H. Hurley, C. S. Kochanek, M. Macleod, A. Meisner, P. E. Nugent, A. Ridnaia, D. J. Sand, D. Svinkin, C. Ward, S. Yang, A. Baldeschi, I. V. Chilingarian, Y. Dong, C. Esquivia, W. Fong, C. Guidorzi, P. Lundqvist, D. Milisavljevic

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

We present X-ray and radio observations of the Fast Blue Optical Transient CRTS-CSS161010 J045834−081803 (CSS161010 hereafter) at t = 69–531 days. CSS161010 shows luminous X-ray (L x ~ 5 × 1039 erg s−1) and radio (L ν ~ 1029 erg s−1 Hz−1) emission. The radio emission peaked at ~100 days post-transient explosion and rapidly decayed. We interpret these observations in the context of synchrotron emission from an expanding blast wave. CSS161010 launched a mildly relativistic outflow with velocity Γβc ≥ 0.55c at ~100 days. This is faster than the non-relativistic AT 2018cow (Γβc ~ 0.1c) and closer to ZTF18abvkwla (Γβc …


Harbingers Of Exotic Transients: The Electromagnetic Follow-Up Of Gravitational-Wave Transients & Transient Rates, Deep Chatterjee May 2020

Harbingers Of Exotic Transients: The Electromagnetic Follow-Up Of Gravitational-Wave Transients & Transient Rates, Deep Chatterjee

Theses and Dissertations

Gravitational waves (GWs) provide a unique view of the universe. They directly probe the extreme gravity and extreme matter of compact objects like black holes (BHs) and neutron stars (NSs) which is not always possible from traditional electromagnetic (EM) wave astronomy. The cataclysmic coalescence of compact object binaries is one of the loudest individual sources of GWs that can be detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo Observatory. If one of the component is a NS, there is a possibility that the merger is bright in the EM spectrum. The relativistic astrophysics could launch a …


Swift Spectroscopy Of The Accretion Disk Wind In The Black Hole Gro J1655-40, M. Balakrishnan, J. M. Miller, N. Trueba, M. Reynolds, J. Raymond, Daniel Proga, A. C. Fabian, T. Kallman, J. Kaastra Apr 2020

Swift Spectroscopy Of The Accretion Disk Wind In The Black Hole Gro J1655-40, M. Balakrishnan, J. M. Miller, N. Trueba, M. Reynolds, J. Raymond, Daniel Proga, A. C. Fabian, T. Kallman, J. Kaastra

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

Chandra obtained two High Energy Transmission Grating spectra of the stellar-mass black hole GRO J1655−40 during its 2005 outburst, revealing a rich and complex disk wind. Soon after its launch, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory began monitoring the same outburst. Some X-ray Telescope (XRT) observations were obtained in a mode that makes it impossible to remove strong Mn calibration lines, so the Fe Kα line region in the spectra was previously neglected. However, these lines enable a precise calibration of the energy scale, facilitating studies of the absorption-dominated disk wind and its velocity shifts. Here we present fits to 15 …


Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred From The First And Second Observing Runs Of Advanced Ligo And Advanced Virgo, B. P. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, S. Abraham, Teviet Creighton, Mario C. Diaz, Soma Mukherjee, Volker Quetschke, Malik Rakhmanov, Karla E. Ramirez, Satzhan Sitmukhambetov, D. Tuyenbayev, W. H. Wang, Adam Zadrozny Sep 2019

Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred From The First And Second Observing Runs Of Advanced Ligo And Advanced Virgo, B. P. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, S. Abraham, Teviet Creighton, Mario C. Diaz, Soma Mukherjee, Volker Quetschke, Malik Rakhmanov, Karla E. Ramirez, Satzhan Sitmukhambetov, D. Tuyenbayev, W. H. Wang, Adam Zadrozny

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present results on the mass, spin, and redshift distributions with phenomenological population models using the 10 binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected in the first and second observing runs completed by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. We constrain properties of the BBH mass spectrum using models with a range of parameterizations of the BBH mass and spin distributions. We find that the mass distribution of the more massive BH in such binaries is well approximated by models with no more than 1% of BHs more massive than 45M(circle dot) and a power-law index of alpha = 1.3(-1.7)(+1.4) (90% credibility). …


Studying The Potential Of The [Oii] Emission Line As A Surrogate For Stellar Velocity Dispersion In Active Galactic Nuclei, Edward F. Donohue Nov 2018

Studying The Potential Of The [Oii] Emission Line As A Surrogate For Stellar Velocity Dispersion In Active Galactic Nuclei, Edward F. Donohue

Physics

We study the emission profiles of 80 active galaxies to find a surrogate for stellar velocity dispersion. We focus on the width of the emission line of once ionized oxygen, [OII], and compare our results to previous work that used [OIII]. In previous research, [OIII] was found to be a good candidate for a surrogate for stellar velocity dispersion, but analysis of the line was complicated by the presence of wings caused by gas infall and outflow in the region. Emission lines with lower ionization levels, like [OII], are known to have less artificial line-broadening from wings. The study of …


An Acoustical Analogue Of A Galactic-Scale Gravitational-Wave Detector, Michael T. Lam, Joseph D. Romano, Joey Key, M. E. Normandin, ‪Jeffrey S. Hazboun Oct 2018

An Acoustical Analogue Of A Galactic-Scale Gravitational-Wave Detector, Michael T. Lam, Joseph D. Romano, Joey Key, M. E. Normandin, ‪Jeffrey S. Hazboun

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications and Presentations

By precisely monitoring the “ticks” of Nature's most precise clocks (millisecond pulsars), scientists are trying to detect the “ripples in spacetime” (gravitational waves) produced by the inspirals of supermassive black holes in the centers of distant merging galaxies. Here, we describe a relatively simple demonstration that uses two metronomes and a microphone to illustrate several techniques used by pulsar astronomers to search for and detect gravitational waves. An adapted version of this demonstration could be used as an instructional laboratory investigation at the undergraduate level.


Primordial Black Holes In The Cosmological Context And Transient Electromagnetic Signatures From Merging Black Hole Binaries, Jared Robert Rice May 2018

Primordial Black Holes In The Cosmological Context And Transient Electromagnetic Signatures From Merging Black Hole Binaries, Jared Robert Rice

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The cosmological evolution of primordial black holes (PBHs) is presented via analysis of the accretion and evaporation histories of the holes. The ultimate end of any BH is evaporation — a spectacular seconds-long burst of high-energy radiation and particles. The critical initial mass of a PBH undergoing current era evaporation is ∼ 510 trillion grams. A near- critical mass PBH will not accrete radiation or matter in sufficient quantity to retard its inevitable evaporation, if the hole remains within an average volume of the universe. The gravitational waves (GWs) from five BH binary merger events discovered by the LIGO/Virgo collaborations …


Does The Black Hole Shadow Probe The Event Horizon Geometry?, Pedro V. P. Cunha, Carlos A. R. Herdeiro, Maria J. Rodriguez Apr 2018

Does The Black Hole Shadow Probe The Event Horizon Geometry?, Pedro V. P. Cunha, Carlos A. R. Herdeiro, Maria J. Rodriguez

All Physics Faculty Publications

There is an exciting prospect of obtaining the shadow of astrophysical black holes (BHs) in the near future with the Event Horizon Telescope. As a matter of principle, this justifies asking how much one can learn about the BH horizon itself from such a measurement. Since the shadow is determined by a set of special photon orbits, rather than horizon properties, it is possible that different horizon geometries yield similar shadows. One may then ask how sensitive is the shadow to details of the horizon geometry? As a case study, we consider the double Schwarzschild BH and analyze the impact …


Gw170608: Observation Of A 19 Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence, B. P. Abbott, K. Aultoneal, S. Gaudio, K. Gill, E. M. Gretarsson, B. Hughey, M. Muratore, J. W. W. Pratt, S. G. Schwalbe, K. Staats, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al. Dec 2017

Gw170608: Observation Of A 19 Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence, B. P. Abbott, K. Aultoneal, S. Gaudio, K. Gill, E. M. Gretarsson, B. Hughey, M. Muratore, J. W. W. Pratt, S. G. Schwalbe, K. Staats, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

On 2017 June 8 at 02:01:16.49 UTC, a gravitational-wave (GW) signal from the merger of two stellar-mass black holes was observed by the two Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detectors with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13. This system is the lightest black hole binary so far observed, with component masses of 12 +7 -2 M⨀ and 7 +2 -2 M⨀ (90% credible intervals). These lie in the range of measured black hole masses in low-mass X-ray binaries, thus allowing us to compare black holes detected through GWs with electromagnetic observations. The source’s luminosity distance is 340 +140 -140 Mpc, …


Book Review: Chandra's Cosmos: Dark Matter, Black Holes, And Other Wonders Revealed By Nasa's Premier X-Ray Observatory, T. D. Oswalt Nov 2017

Book Review: Chandra's Cosmos: Dark Matter, Black Holes, And Other Wonders Revealed By Nasa's Premier X-Ray Observatory, T. D. Oswalt

Publications

This document is Dr. Oswalt’s review of Chandra's cosmos: dark matter, black holes, and other wonders revealed by NASA's premier X-ray observatory by Wallace H. Tucker. Smithsonian Books, 2017. 266p bibl index ISBN 9781588345875, $29.95; ISBN 9781588345882 ebook, contact publiser for price.


Almost-Bps Solutions In Multi-Center Taub-Nut, C. Rugina, A. Ludu Oct 2017

Almost-Bps Solutions In Multi-Center Taub-Nut, C. Rugina, A. Ludu

Publications

Microstates of multiple collinear black holes embedded in a non-collinear two-center Taub-NUT spacetime are sought in 4 dimensions. A set of coupled partial differential equations are obtained and solved for almost-BPS states, where some supersymmetry is preserved in the context of N = 2 supergravity in 4 dimensions. The regularity of solutions is carefully considered, and we ensure that no CTC (closed time-like curves) are present. The larger framework is that of 11-dimensional N = 2 supergravity, and the current theory is obtained by compactifying it down to 4 dimensions. This work is a generalization (to three non-collinear centers) of …


Magnetic Fields Threading Black Holes: Restrictions From General Relativity And Implications For Astrophysical Black Holes, David Garofalo Jun 2017

Magnetic Fields Threading Black Holes: Restrictions From General Relativity And Implications For Astrophysical Black Holes, David Garofalo

Faculty and Research Publications

The idea that black hole spin is instrumental in the generation of powerful jets in active galactic nuclei and X-ray binaries is arguably the most contentious claim in black hole astrophysics. Because jets are thought to originate in the context of electromagnetism, and the modeling of Maxwell fields in curved spacetime around black holes is challenging, various approximations are made in numerical simulations that fall under the guise of ‘ideal magnetohydrodynamics’. But the simplifications of this framework may struggle to capture relevant details of real astrophysical environments near black holes. In this work, we highlight tension between analytic and numerical …


Gw170104: Observation Of A 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence At Redshift 0.2, B. P. Abbott, K. Aultoneal, S. Gaudio, K. Gill, B. Hughey, J. W. W. Pratt, E. Schmidt, G. Schwalbe, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al. Jun 2017

Gw170104: Observation Of A 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence At Redshift 0.2, B. P. Abbott, K. Aultoneal, S. Gaudio, K. Gill, B. Hughey, J. W. W. Pratt, E. Schmidt, G. Schwalbe, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

We describe the observation of GW170104, a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of a pair of stellar-mass black holes. The signal was measured on January 4, 2017 at 10∶11:58.6 UTC by the twin advanced detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory during their second observing run, with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13 and a false alarm rate less than 1 in 70 000 years. The inferred component black hole masses are 31.2 þ8.4 −6.0M⊙ and 19.4 þ5.3 −5.9M⊙ (at the 90% credible level). The black hole spins are best constrained through measurement of the effective inspiral spin parameter, …


Black Holes And Einstein: A Commentary Of The Types Of Black Holes That Produce Gravitational Waves, Sage A. Russell Jan 2017

Black Holes And Einstein: A Commentary Of The Types Of Black Holes That Produce Gravitational Waves, Sage A. Russell

A with Honors Projects

Perhaps the most the notorious player in the astronomical field, objects known as black holes captivate the imaginations of scientists and average folk the world over, but as much as we adore hypothesizing about what black holes are like, there is so much that we’re only just finding out about. From 1909 until 1918, famed physicist Albert Einstein predicted many characteristics of spacetime and the effect of massive objects on it, including the notion of an energy-carrying wave moving at the speed of light that causes ripples through the fabric of spacetime, otherwise known as gravitational waves. A relatively recent …


The Basic Physics Of The Binary Black Hole Merger Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, J. Pratt, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al. Jan 2017

The Basic Physics Of The Binary Black Hole Merger Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, J. Pratt, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

The first direct gravitational-wave detection was made by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory on September 14, 2015. The GW150914 signal was strong enough to be apparent, without using any waveform model, in the filtered detector strain data. Here, features of the signal visible in the data are analyzed using concepts from Newtonian physics and general relativity, accessible to anyone with a general physics background. The simple analysis presented here is consistent with the fully general-relativistic analyses published elsewhere, in showing that the signal was produced by the inspiral and subsequent merger of two black holes. The black holes …


The Rate Of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced Ligo Observations Surrounding Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al. Dec 2016

The Rate Of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced Ligo Observations Surrounding Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

A transient gravitational-wave signal, GW150914, was identified in the twin Advanced LIGO detectors on 2015 September 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC. To assess the implications of this discovery, the detectors remained in operation with unchanged configurations over a period of 39 days around the time of the signal. At the detection statistic threshold corresponding to that observed for GW150914, our search of the 16 days of simultaneous two-detector observational data is estimated to have a false-alarm rate (FAR) of


Supplement: The Rate Of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced Ligo Observations Surrounding Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al. Dec 2016

Supplement: The Rate Of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced Ligo Observations Surrounding Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

This article provides supplemental information for a Letter reporting the rate of (BBH) coalescences inferred from 16 days of coincident Advanced LIGO observations surrounding the transient (GW) signal GW150914. In that work we reported various rate estimates whose 90% confidence intervals fell in the range 2–600 Gpc−3 yr−1. Here we give details on our method and computations, including information about our search pipelines, a derivation of our likelihood function for the analysis, a description of the astrophysical search trigger distribution expected from merging BBHs, details on our computational methods, a description of the effects and our model for calibration uncertainty, …