Search for gravitational waves from intermediate mass binary black holes

Creators: Abadie, J.; Abbott, B. P.; Abbott, R.; Adhikari, Rana X.; Ajith, P.; Anderson, S. B.; Arai, K.; Araya, M.; Barayoga, J. C. B.; Betzwieser, J.; Billingsley, G.; Black, E.; Blackburn, J. K.; Bork, R.; Brooks, A. F.; Cepeda, C.; Chalermsongsak, T.; Corsi, A.; Coyne, D. C.; Dannenberg, R.; Daudert, B.; Dergachev, V.; DeSalvo, R.; Driggers, J. C.; Ehrens, P.; Engel, R.; Etzel, T.; Fotopoulos, N.; Gustafson, E. K.; Hanna, C.; Heefner, J.; Heptonstall, A. W.; Hodge, K. A.; Ivanov, A.; Jacobson, M.; James, E.; Kalmus, P.; Kells, W.; Keppel, D. G.; King, P. J.; Kondrashov, V.; Korth, W. Z.; Kozak, D.; Lazzarini, A.; Lindquist, P. E.; Mageswaran, M.; Mailand, K.; Maros, E.; Marx, J. N.; McIntyre, G.; Nash, T.; Ogin, G. H.; Osthelder, C.; Patel, P.; Pedraza, M.; Phelps, M.; Price, L. R.; Privitera, S.; Robertson, N. A.; Rollins, J. G.; Sannibale, V.; Santamaría, L.; Seifert, F.; Singer, A.; Singer, L.; Smith, M. R.; Stochino, A.; Taylor, R.; Torrie, C. I.; Vass, S.; Villar, A. E.; Wallace, L.; Whitcomb, S. E.; Willems, P. A.; Williams, R.; Yamamoto, H.; Yeaton-Massey, D.; Zhang, L.; Zweizig, J.; Chen, Y.; Hong, T.; Luan, J.; Miao, H.; Ott, C. D.; Somiya, K.; Thorne, K. S.; Wen, L.; Yang, H.; Drever, R. W. P.; Harms, J.; Weinstein, Alan J.; LIGO Scientific Collaboration; Virgo Collaboration

Abstract

We present the results of a weakly modeled burst search for gravitational waves from mergers of nonspinning intermediate mass black holes in the total mass range 100–450 M_⊙ and with the component mass ratios between 1:1 and 4:1. The search was conducted on data collected by the LIGO and Virgo detectors between November of 2005 and October of 2007. No plausible signals were observed by the search which constrains the astrophysical rates of the intermediate mass black holes mergers as a function of the component masses. In the most efficiently detected bin centered on 88+88 M_⊙, for nonspinning sources, the rate density upper limit is 0.13 per Mpc^3 per Myr at the 90% confidence level.

Additional Information

© 2012 American Physical Society. Received 21 February 2012; published 24 May 2012. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction and operation of the GEO600 detector, and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the research by these agencies and by the Australian Research Council, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy, the Spanish Ministerio de Educaciόn y Ciencia, the Conselleria d'Economia Hisenda i Innovaciό of the Govern de les Illes Balears, the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the FOCUS Programme of Foundation for Polish Science, the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Carnegie Trust, the Leverhulme Trust, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This document has been assigned LIGO Laboratory document number P1100068.

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