GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1-2017

Journal / Book Title

Physical Review Letters

Abstract

We describe the observation of GW170104, a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of a pair of stellar-mass black holes. The signal was measured on January 4, 2017 at 10 11:58.6 UTC by the twin advanced detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory during their second observing run, with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 13 and a false alarm rate less than 1 in 70 000 years. The inferred component black hole masses are 31.2-6.0+8.4M' and 19.4-5.9+5.3M (at the 90% credible level). The black hole spins are best constrained through measurement of the effective inspiral spin parameter, a mass-weighted combination of the spin components perpendicular to the orbital plane, χeff=-0.12-0.30+0.21. This result implies that spin configurations with both component spins positively aligned with the orbital angular momentum are disfavored. The source luminosity distance is 880-390+450 Mpc corresponding to a redshift of z=0.18-0.07+0.08. We constrain the magnitude of modifications to the gravitational-wave dispersion relation and perform null tests of general relativity. Assuming that gravitons are dispersed in vacuum like massive particles, we bound the graviton mass to mg≤7.7×10-23 eV/c2. In all cases, we find that GW170104 is consistent with general relativity.

Comments

This work is part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration. Additional authors may be found on the publication.

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.221101

Published Citation

Scientific, L. I. G. O., Abbott, B. P., Abbott, R., Abbott, T. D., Acernese, F., Ackley, K., ... & Cao, H. (2017). GW170104: observation of a 50-solar-mass binary black hole coalescence at redshift 0.2. Physical review letters, 118(22), 221101.

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