Abstract
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 . 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, and reached a peak gravitational strain of . The inferred source-frame initial black hole masses are and , and the final black hole mass is . We find that at least one of the component black holes has spin greater than 0.2. This source is located at a luminosity distance of corresponding to a redshift of . All uncertainties define a 90% credible interval. This second gravitational-wave observation provides improved constraints on stellar populations and on deviations from general relativity.
- Received 31 May 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.241103
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Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Focus
LIGO Bags Another Black Hole Merger
Published 15 June 2016
LIGO has detected a second burst of gravitational waves from merging black holes, suggesting that such detections will soon become routine and part of a new kind of astronomy.
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