Search for Eccentric Binary Black Hole Mergers with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo during Their First and Second Observing Runs

Creators: Abbott, B. P.; Abbott, R.; Adhikari, R. X.; Anand, S.; Ananyeva, A.; Anderson, S. B.; Appert, S.; Arai, K.; Araya, M. C.; Barayoga, J. C.; Barish, B. C.; Billingsley, G.; Biscans, S; Blackburn, J. K.; Bork, R.; Brooks, A. F.; Brunett, S.; Cahillane, C.; Callister, T. A.; Coughlin, M. W.; Couvares, P.; Coyne, D. C.; Ehrens, P.; Etzel, T.; Feicht, J.; Gossan, S. E.; Grassia, P.; Gupta, Anchal; Gustafson, E. K.; Kamai, B.; Kanner, J. B.; Kasprzack, M.; Kondrashov, V.; Korth, W. Z.; Kozak, D. B.; Lazzarini, A.; Lo, R. K. L.; Markowitz, A.; Maros, E.; Massinger, T. J.; Matichard, F.; McIver, J.; Meshkov, S.; Nevin, L.; Pedraza, M.; Reitze, D. H.; Richardson, J. W.; Robertson, N. A.; Rollins, J. G.; Sanchez, E. J.; Sanchez, L. E.; Sun, L.; Tao, D.; Taylor, R.; Torrie, C. I.; Vajente, G.; Vass, S.; Venugopalan, G.; Wade, A. R.; Wallace, L.; Weinstein, A. J.; Willis, J. L.; Wipf, C. C.; Xiao, S.; Yamamoto, H.; Zhang, L.; Zucker, M. E.; Zweizig, J.; Barkett, K.; Blackman, J.; Chen, Y.; Li, X.; Ma, Y.; Scheel, M.; Tso, R.; Varma, V.; LIGO Scientific Collaboration; Virgo Collaboration

Abstract

When formed through dynamical interactions, stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) may retain eccentric orbits (e > 0.1 at 10 Hz) detectable by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Eccentricity can therefore be used to differentiate dynamically formed binaries from isolated BBH mergers. Current template-based gravitational-wave searches do not use waveform models associated with eccentric orbits, rendering the search less efficient for eccentric binary systems. Here we present the results of a search for BBH mergers that inspiral in eccentric orbits using data from the first and second observing runs (O1 and O2) of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. We carried out the search with the coherent WaveBurst algorithm, which uses minimal assumptions on the signal morphology and does not rely on binary waveform templates. We show that it is sensitive to binary mergers with a detection range that is weakly dependent on eccentricity for all bound systems. Our search did not identify any new binary merger candidates. We interpret these results in light of eccentric binary formation models. We rule out formation channels with rates ≳100 Gpc^(−3) yr^(−1) for e > 0.1, assuming a black hole mass spectrum with a power-law index ≾2.

Additional Information

© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2019 July 31; revised 2019 August 10; accepted 2019 August 14; published 2019 September 30. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO, as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación, the Vicepresidència i Conselleria d'Innovació Recerca i Turisme and the Conselleria d'Educació i Universitat del Govern de les Illes Balears, the Conselleria d'Educació Investigació Cultura i Esport de la Generalitat Valenciana, the National Science Centre of Poland, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Russian Science Foundation, the European Commission, the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO), the Paris Île-de-France Region, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFIH), the National Research Foundation of Korea, Industry Canada and the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations, and Communications, the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Research Corporation, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, MPS, INFN, CNRS, and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for provision of computational resources.

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