CaltechAUTHORS
Published July 1, 2021 | Version Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Testing the Black-Hole Area Law with GW150914

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Stony Brook University
  • 3. ROR icon Cornell University
  • 4. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

We present observational confirmation of Hawking's black-hole area theorem based on data from GW150914, finding agreement with the prediction with 97% (95%) probability when we model the ringdown including (excluding) overtones of the quadrupolar mode. We obtain this result from a new time-domain analysis of the pre- and postmerger data. We also confirm that the inspiral and ringdown portions of the signal are consistent with the same remnant mass and spin, in agreement with general relativity.

Additional Information

© 2021 American Physical Society. (Received 8 December 2020; accepted 26 May 2021; published 1 July 2021) We thank Kip S. Thorne for encouraging this study and providing feedback during its development; we also thank Geraint Pratten, Nathan Johnson-McDaniel, and Katerina Chatziioannou for comments on the draft. M. I. is supported by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship Grant No. HST-HF2-51410.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under Contract NAS5-26555. The Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation. M. G. and S. T. are supported in part by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and by NSF Grant No. PHY-1912081 at Cornell. M. S. is supported in part by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and NSF Grants No. PHY-2011961 and No. PHY-2011968 at Caltech. This research has made use of data, software, and/or web tools obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center [29], a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and the Virgo Collaboration. LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO are funded by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) 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. Virgo is funded, through the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Italian Istituto Nazionale della Fisica Nucleare (INFN), and the Dutch Nikhef, with contributions by institutions from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Monaco, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. The authors are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and Cardiff University, and supported by NSF Grants No. PHY-0757058 and No. PHY-0823459, and STFC Grant No. ST/I006285/1. This Letter carries LIGO document number LIGO-P2000507.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevLett.127.011103.pdf

Accepted Version - 2012.04486.pdf

Files

2012.04486.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
109763
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210709-212641325

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.04486 (URL)

Funding

NASA Hubble Fellowship
HST-HF2-51410.001-A
NASA
NAS5-26555
Simons Foundation
Sherman Fairchild Foundation
NSF
PHY-1912081
NSF
PHY-2011961
NSF
PHY-2011968
Max-Planck-Society
Australian Research Council
European Gravitational Observatory (EGO)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics
NSF
PHY-0757058
NSF
PHY-0823459
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
ST/I006285/1

Dates

Created
2021-07-09
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-04-28
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, TAPIR, LIGO
Other Numbering System Name
LIGO Document
Other Numbering System Identifier
P2000507