Numerical relativity injection analysis of signals from generically spinning intermediate mass black hole binaries in Advanced LIGO data

Abstract

The advent of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy has provided us with observations of black holes more massive than those known from x-ray astronomy. However, the observation of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) remains a big challenge. After their second observing run, the LIGO Virgo Scientific collaborations (LVC) placed upper limits on the coalescence rate density of nonprecessing IMBH binaries (IMBHBs). In this Numerical Relativity Injection Analysis (NuRIA), we explore the sensitivity of two of the search pipelines used by the LVC to signals from 69 numerically simulated IMBHBs with total mass greater than $200\text{ }\text{ }{M}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}}$ having generic spins, out of which 27 have a precessing orbital plane. In particular, we compare the matched-filter search PyCBC, and the coherent model-independent search technique cWB. We find that, in general, cWB is more sensitive to IMBHBs than PyCBC, with the difference in sensitivity depending on the masses and spins of the source. Consequently, we use cWB to place the first upper limits on the merger rate of generically spinning IMBH binaries using publicly available data from the first Advanced LIGO observing run.