LIGO Document P190412-v12

GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses

Document #:
LIGO-P190412-v12
Document type:
P - Publications
Other Versions:
LIGO-P190412-v11
28 Sep 2020, 07:41
LIGO-P190412-v9
24 Aug 2020, 13:24
Abstract:
We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05:30:44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19. The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: a ~30 solar mass black hole merged with a ~8 solar mass black hole companion. The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.22 and 0.60 (90% probability). Asymmetric systems are predicted to emit gravitational waves with stronger contributions from higher multipoles, and indeed we find strong evidence for gravitational radiation beyond the leading quadrupolar order in the observed signal. A suite of tests performed on GW190412 indicates consistency with Einstein's general theory of relativity. While the mass ratio of this system differs from all previous detections, we show that it is consistent with the population model of stellar binary black holes inferred from the first two observing runs.
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Notes and Changes:
published paper; minor bugfix in released parameter estimation samples (affected only network-matched-filter SNRs prior to September 29 2020)
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Published in Phys Rev D vol. 102 pg. 043015.

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