Gravitational Waves from Coalescing Black Hole MACHO Binaries

1997/08/07 by Takashi Nakamura, Misao Sasaki, Takahiro Tanaka +1 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/310886

published as Astrophys.J.487:L139-L142,1997 · 6 pages, Latex, Accepted for publication in Apj. Letters

arxiv created 1997/08/07 · openalex publication_date 1997/10/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

If MACHOs are black holes of mass ~0.5 M ☉ , they must have been formed in the early universe when the temperature was ~1 GeV. We estimate that in this case in our Galaxy's halo out to ~ 50 kpc there exist ~5 × 10 8 black hole binaries the coalescence times of which are comparable to the age of the universe, so that the coalescence rate will be ~5 × 10 −2 events yr -1 per galaxy. This suggests that we can expect a few events per year within 15 Mpc. The gravitational waves from such coalescing black hole MACHOs can be detected by the first generation of interferometers in the LIGO/VIRGO/TAMA/GEO network. Therefore, the existence of black hole MACHOs can be tested within the next 5 yr by gravitational waves.

Cited by

• Stable Operation of a 300-m Laser Interferometer with Sufficient Sensitivity to Detect Gravitational-Wave Events within Our Galaxy
• Interacting black holes on the brane: the seeding of binaries
• Second post-Newtonian gravitational wave polarizations for compact binaries in elliptical orbits
• Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Black Hole MACHO Binaries
• Probing Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter with Gravitational Waves
• Seven hints for primordial black hole dark matter