Abstract
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 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 over the observing period. It also identified a third possible signal, LVT151012, with substantially lower significance and with an 87% probability of being of astrophysical origin. We provide detailed estimates of the parameters of the observed systems. Both GW150914 and GW151226 provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the two-body motion of a compact-object binary in the large velocity, highly nonlinear regime. We do not observe any deviations from general relativity, and we place improved empirical bounds on several high-order post-Newtonian coefficients. From our observations, we infer stellar-mass binary black hole merger rates lying in the range . These observations are beginning to inform astrophysical predictions of binary black hole formation rates and indicate that future observing runs of the Advanced detector network will yield many more gravitational-wave detections.
- Received 24 June 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.041015
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Erratum
Erratum: Binary Black Hole Mergers in the First Advanced LIGO Observing Run [Phys. Rev. X 6, 041015 (2016)]
B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations)
Phys. Rev. X 8, 039903 (2018)
Popular Summary
According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravitational waves will be emitted by extremely energetic events, such as the merger of two black holes. In recent decades, significant effort has been put into the design and construction of detectors to observe such gravitational waves. The most sensitive detectors to date are the two Advanced LIGO interferometers with 4-km-long arms, which conducted their first observing run from September 2015 through January 2016. Several binary black holes were detected during that run and are presented here: two unambiguously identified signals, GW150914 and GW151226 (each with a statistical significance exceeding ); and a third, LVT151012, with an 87% probability of being astrophysical.
The first detection, GW150914, is the most massive with a total mass of approximately 60 solar masses. GW151226 is the lightest detection with a total mass of roughly 20 solar masses; this detection shows strong evidence that at least one of its components is spinning. Candidate LVT151012, estimated to be about twice as far away as the other two candidates, at a distance of approximately three billion light years, has a total mass around 40 solar masses. These results are consistent with the predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and indicate that each merger resulted in the formation of a rapidly rotating black hole. We additionally infer a stellar-mass binary black hole merger rate of .
The observations and the results from the currently state-of-the-art theoretical modeling reported here comprehensively strongly suggest that additional black holes will be observed during Advanced LIGO’s second run, which is expected to start by the end of 2016. With other detectors currently being commissioned to begin observations, the age of gravitational-wave astronomy has truly begun.
