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Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

2016/02/11 by The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott +99 · 4 voices · 582 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc #astro-ph.HE

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.061102

Abstract

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 1.0 × 10-21. 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 significance greater than 5.1 σ. The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410+160-180 Mpc corresponding to a redshift z = 0.09+0.03-0.04. In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are 36+5-4 M_\odot and 29+4-4 M_\odot, and the final black hole mass is 62+4-4 M_\odot, with 3.0+0.5-0.5 M_\odot c2 radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals.These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

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