New black hole mergers in the LIGO-Virgo O3 data from a gravitational wave search including higher-order harmonics

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Main Authors: Wadekar, Digvijay, Roulet, Javier, Venumadhav, Tejaswi, Mehta, Ajit Kumar, Zackay, Barak, Mushkin, Jonathan, Olsen, Seth, Zaldarriaga, Matias
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Wadekar, Digvijay
Roulet, Javier
Venumadhav, Tejaswi
Mehta, Ajit Kumar
Zackay, Barak
Mushkin, Jonathan
Olsen, Seth
Zaldarriaga, Matias
author_facet Wadekar, Digvijay
Roulet, Javier
Venumadhav, Tejaswi
Mehta, Ajit Kumar
Zackay, Barak
Mushkin, Jonathan
Olsen, Seth
Zaldarriaga, Matias
contents Nearly all of the previous gravitational wave (GW) searches in the LIGO-Virgo data included GW waveforms with only the dominant quadrupole harmonic, i.e., omitting higher-order harmonics which are predicted by general relativity. We improved the IAS pipeline by efficiently introducing higher harmonics in the GW templates using the techniques in Wadekar et al. [1, 2]. Using the IAS-HM pipeline on the public LIGO-Virgo data from the O3 run, we find 11 new candidate BBH mergers with $0.52\leq p_\mathrm{astro}\leq 0.88$ (we use the detection threshold as the astrophysical probability, $p_\mathrm{astro}$, being over 0.5, following the approach of other pipelines). We broadly recover the high-significance events from earlier catalogs, except a few which were vetoed. We also find that including higher harmonics in our search raises the significance of a few previously reported marginal events (e.g., GW190711_030756). A few notable properties of our new candidate events are as follows. At $>95$% credibility, 4 candidates have primary masses in the intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) range (i.e., above $\sim$100 $M_\odot$). 5 candidates have median mass ratio $q \leq 0.5$. 5 candidates have median redshift $z \geq 0.8$. 3 candidates have non-zero $χ_{\rm eff}$ at $>95\%$ credibility. While our new candidate events have modest false alarm rates ($\gtrsim 1.5 $/yr), a population inference study including these can better inform the parameter space of BHs corresponding to the pair instability mass gap, high redshifts and asymmetric mass ratios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_06631
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle New black hole mergers in the LIGO-Virgo O3 data from a gravitational wave search including higher-order harmonics
Wadekar, Digvijay
Roulet, Javier
Venumadhav, Tejaswi
Mehta, Ajit Kumar
Zackay, Barak
Mushkin, Jonathan
Olsen, Seth
Zaldarriaga, Matias
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Nearly all of the previous gravitational wave (GW) searches in the LIGO-Virgo data included GW waveforms with only the dominant quadrupole harmonic, i.e., omitting higher-order harmonics which are predicted by general relativity. We improved the IAS pipeline by efficiently introducing higher harmonics in the GW templates using the techniques in Wadekar et al. [1, 2]. Using the IAS-HM pipeline on the public LIGO-Virgo data from the O3 run, we find 11 new candidate BBH mergers with $0.52\leq p_\mathrm{astro}\leq 0.88$ (we use the detection threshold as the astrophysical probability, $p_\mathrm{astro}$, being over 0.5, following the approach of other pipelines). We broadly recover the high-significance events from earlier catalogs, except a few which were vetoed. We also find that including higher harmonics in our search raises the significance of a few previously reported marginal events (e.g., GW190711_030756). A few notable properties of our new candidate events are as follows. At $>95$% credibility, 4 candidates have primary masses in the intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) range (i.e., above $\sim$100 $M_\odot$). 5 candidates have median mass ratio $q \leq 0.5$. 5 candidates have median redshift $z \geq 0.8$. 3 candidates have non-zero $χ_{\rm eff}$ at $>95\%$ credibility. While our new candidate events have modest false alarm rates ($\gtrsim 1.5 $/yr), a population inference study including these can better inform the parameter space of BHs corresponding to the pair instability mass gap, high redshifts and asymmetric mass ratios.
title New black hole mergers in the LIGO-Virgo O3 data from a gravitational wave search including higher-order harmonics
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.06631