Black Hole Inspirals Research Articles

Probing the spin-induced quadrupole moment of massive black holes with the inspiral of binary black holes

Probing the spin-induced quadrupole moment of massive black holes with the inspiral of binary black holes

Using Pulsar Parameter Drifts to Detect Subnanohertz Gravitational Waves.

Gravitational waves with frequencies below 1nHz are notoriously difficult to detect. With periods exceeding current experimental lifetimes, they induce slow drifts in observables rather than periodic correlations. Observables with well-known intrinsic contributions provide a means to probe this regime. In this Letter, we demonstrate the viability of using observed pulsar timing parameters to discover such "ultralow" frequency gravitational waves, presenting two complementary observables for which the systematic shift induced by ultralow-frequency gravitational waves can be extracted. Using existing data for these parameters, we search the ultralow-frequency regime for continuous-wave signals, finding a sensitivity near the expected prediction from inspirals of supermassive black holes. We do not see an excess in the data, setting a limit on the strain of 1.3×10^{-12} at 450pHz with a sensitivity dropping approximately quadratically with frequency until 10pHz. Our search method opens a new frequency range for gravitational wave detection and has profound implications for astrophysics, cosmology, and particle physics.

The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background

We report multiple lines of evidence for a stochastic signal that is correlated among 67 pulsars from the 15 yr pulsar timing data set collected by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves. The correlations follow the Hellings–Downs pattern expected for a stochastic gravitational-wave background. The presence of such a gravitational-wave background with a power-law spectrum is favored over a model with only independent pulsar noises with a Bayes factor in excess of 1014, and this same model is favored over an uncorrelated common power-law spectrum model with Bayes factors of 200–1000, depending on spectral modeling choices. We have built a statistical background distribution for the latter Bayes factors using a method that removes interpulsar correlations from our data set, finding p = 10−3 (≈3σ) for the observed Bayes factors in the null no-correlation scenario. A frequentist test statistic built directly as a weighted sum of interpulsar correlations yields p = 5 × 10−5 to 1.9 × 10−4 (≈3.5σ–4σ). Assuming a fiducial f −2/3 characteristic strain spectrum, as appropriate for an ensemble of binary supermassive black hole inspirals, the strain amplitude is (median + 90% credible interval) at a reference frequency of 1 yr−1. The inferred gravitational-wave background amplitude and spectrum are consistent with astrophysical expectations for a signal from a population of supermassive black hole binaries, although more exotic cosmological and astrophysical sources cannot be excluded. The observation of Hellings–Downs correlations points to the gravitational-wave origin of this signal.

First search for ultralight dark matter with a space-based gravitational-wave antenna: LISA Pathfinder

We present here results from the first-ever search for dark-photon dark matter that could have coupled to baryons in LISA Pathfinder, the technology demonstrator for a space-based gravitational-wave antenna. After analyzing approximately three months of data taken by LISA Pathfinder in the frequency range $[2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}5},5]\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{Hz}$, corresponding to dark-photon masses of $[8\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}20},2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}14}]\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}/{c}^{2}$, we find no evidence of a dark-matter signal and set upper limits on the strength of the dark-photon/baryon coupling. To perform this search, we leveraged methods that search for quasimonochromatic gravitational-wave signals in ground-based interferometers and are robust against non-Gaussianities and gaps in the data. Our work therefore represents a proof-of-concept test of search methods in LISA to find persistent, quasimonochromatic signals and shows our ability to handle non-Gaussian artifacts and gaps while maintaining good sensitivity compared to the optimal matched filter. The results also indicate that these methods can be powerful tools in LISA to not only find dark matter, but also look for other persistent signals from, e.g., intermediate-mass black hole inspirals and galactic white dwarf binaries.

Parity violation in spin-precessing binaries: Gravitational waves from the inspiral of black holes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity

Spin precession in compact binaries is intricately tuned to the multipole structure of the underlying bodies. For black holes, violations of the no-hair theorems induced by modifications to general relativity correct the precession dynamics, which in turn imprints onto the amplitude and phase modulations of the gravitational waves emitted by the binary. Recently, the spin precession equations were derived up to second order in spin for dynamical Chern-Simons (dCS) gravity, a parity-violating modified theory of gravity. We here solve these equations and construct, for the first time, analytic expressions for the time- and frequency-domain gravitational waves emitted in the quasicircular inspiral of spin-precessing black hole binaries in a modified theory of gravity using the post-Newtonian approximation. Working within the small coupling approximation and using multiple scale analysis, we show that the corrections to the nutation phase enter at relative first post-Newtonian (1PN) order, and the corrections to the precession angle and Thomas phase enter at relative 0PN order. Making use of the stationary phase approximation and shifted uniform asymptotics, we find that the Fourier phase of the waveform is characterized by three modifications: two due to the backreaction of the precession dynamics onto the spin-orbit and spin-spin couplings that enter at 1.5PN and 2PN orders, and a 2PN modification due to the emission of dipole radiation. We also find that backreaction of the precession dynamics forces the dCS corrections to the Fourier amplitude to enter at 0PN order, as opposed to 2PN order, as expected for spin-aligned binaries. Our work lays the first foundational stones to build an inspiral-merger-ringdown phenomenological model for spin-precessing binaries in a modified theory of gravity.

Gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from binary black holes with electric and magnetic charges: elliptical orbits on a cone

Extending the electromagnetic and gravitational radiations from binary black holes with electric and magnetic charges in circular orbits in Liu et al. (Phys. Rev. D 102:103520, 2020), we calculate the total emission rates of energy and angular momentum due to gravitational and electromagnetic radiations from dyonic binary black holes in precessing elliptical orbits. It is shown that the emission rates of energy and angular momentum due to gravitational and electromagnetic radiations have the same dependence on the conic angle for different orbits. Moreover, we obtain the evolutions of orbits and find that a circular orbit remains circular while an elliptic orbit becomes quasi-circular due to electromagnetic and gravitational radiations. Using the evolution of orbits, we derive the waveform models for dyonic binary black hole inspirals and show the amplitudes of the gravitational waves for dyonic binary black hole inspirals differ from those for Schwarzschild binary black hole inspirals, which can be used to test electric and magnetic charges of black holes.

Signature of nonuniform area quantization on gravitational waves

Quantum aspects of black holes may have observational imprints on their absorption and emission spectrum. In this work, we consider the possibility of non-uniform area quantization and its effects on the phasing of gravitational waveform from coalescing black hole inspirals. These observations may provide detectable effects distinct from that of a uniform area quantization and allow us to put bounds on various parameters of the underlying model. Our work can also be regarded as a novel test for the area-entropy proportionality of black hole solutions in general relativity.

Constrains on the electric charges of the binary black holes with GWTC-1 events

Testing black hole’s charged property is a fascinating topic in modified gravity and black hole astrophysics. In the first Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-1), ten binary black hole merger events have been formally reported, and these gravitational wave signals have significantly enhanced our understanding of the black hole. In this paper, we try to constrain the amount of electric charge with the parameterized post-Einsteinian framework by treating the electric charge as a small perturbation in a Bayesian way. We find that the current limits in our work are consistent with the result of Fisher information matrix method in previous works. We also develop a waveform model considering a leading order charge effect for binary black hole inspiral.

Probing the black hole metric: Black hole shadows and binary black-hole inspirals

In General Relativity, the spacetimes of black holes have three fundamental properties: (i) they are the same, to lowest order in spin, as the metrics of stellar objects; (ii) they are independent of mass, when expressed in geometric units; and (iii) they are described by the Kerr metric. In this paper, we quantify the upper bounds on potential black-hole metric deviations imposed by observations of black-hole shadows and of binary black-hole inspirals in order to explore the current experimental limits on possible violations of the last two predictions. We find that both types of experiments provide correlated constraints on deviation parameters that are primarily in the tt-components of the spacetimes, when expressed in areal coordinates. We conclude that, currently, there is no evidence for a deviations from the Kerr metric across the 8 orders of magnitudes in masses and 16 orders in curvatures spanned by the two types of black holes. Moreover, because of the particular masses of black holes in the current sample of gravitational-wave sources, the correlations imposed by the two experiments are aligned and of similar magnitudes when expressed in terms of the far field, post-Newtonian predictions of the metrics. If a future coalescing black-hole binary with two low-mass (e.g., ~3 Msun) components is discovered, the degeneracy between the deviation parameters can be broken by combining the inspiral constraints with those from the black-hole shadow measurements.

Charged black hole mergers: orbit circularisation and chirp mass bias

We consider the inspiral of black holes carrying U(1) charge that is not electromagnetic, but corresponds to some dark sector. In the weak-field, low-velocity regime, the components follow Keplerian orbits. We investigate how the orbital parameters evolve for dipole-dominated emission and find that the orbit quickly circularises, though not as efficiently as for a gravitationally dominated emission. We then regard circular orbits, and look for modifications in the gravitational waveform from the components carrying small charges. Taking this into account we populate the waveform with simplified LIGO noise and put it through a matched filtering procedure where the template bank only consists of uncharged templates, focusing on the charges’ effect on the chirp mass estimation. We find a consistent overestimation of the ‘generalised’ chirp mass, and a possible over- and underestimation of the actual chirp mass. Finally, we briefly consider the effect of such charges on hyperbolic encounters, finding again a bias arising from interpreting the generalised chirp mass as the actual chirp mass.

Bayesian analysis of the spin distribution of LIGO/Virgo black holes

Gravitational wave detection from binary black hole (BBH) inspirals has become routine thanks to the LIGO/Virgo interferometers. The nature of these back holes remains uncertain. We study here the spin distributions of LIGO/Virgo black holes from the first catalogue GWTC-1 and the first four published BBH events from run O3. We compute the Bayes evidence for several independent priors: flat, isotropic, spin-aligned and anti-aligned. We find strong evidence for low spins in all of the cases, and significant evidence for small isotropic spins versus any other distribution. When considered as a homogeneous population of black holes, these results give support to the idea that LIGO/Virgo BBH are primordial.

Relaxation in a Fuzzy Dark Matter Halo

Abstract Dark matter may be composed of light bosons, , with a de Broglie wavelength in typical galactic potentials. Such “fuzzy” dark matter (fuzzy dark matter (FDM)) behaves like cold dark matter (CDM) on much larger scales than the de Broglie wavelength, but may resolve some of the challenges faced by CDM in explaining the properties of galaxies on small scales ( ). Because of its wave nature, FDM exhibits stochastic density fluctuations on the scale of the de Broglie wavelength that never damp. The gravitational field from these fluctuations scatters stars and black holes, causing their orbits to diffuse through phase space. We show that this relaxation process can be analyzed quantitatively with the same tools used to analyze classical two-body relaxation in an N-body system, and can be described by treating the FDM fluctuations as quasiparticles, with effective mass in a galaxy with a constant circular speed of . This novel relaxation mechanism may stall the inspiral of supermassive black holes or globular clusters due to dynamical friction at radii of a few hundred parsecs and can heat and expand the central regions of galaxies. These processes can be used to constrain the mass of the light bosons that might comprise FDM.

Massively Parallel Simulations of Binary Black Hole Intermediate-Mass-Ratio Inspirals

We present a highly-scalable framework that targets problems of interest to the numerical relativity and broader astrophysics communities. This framework combines a parallel octree-refined adaptive mesh with a wavelet adaptive multiresolution and a physics module to solve the Einstein equations of general relativity in the BSSN formulation. The goal of this work is to perform advanced, massively parallel numerical simulations of Intermediate Mass Ratio Inspirals (IMRIs) of binary black holes with mass ratios on the order of 100:1. These studies will be used to generate waveforms as used in LIGO data analysis and to calibrate semi-analytical approximate methods. Our framework consists of a distributed memory octree-based adaptive meshing framework in conjunction with a node-local code generator. The code generator makes our code portable across different architectures. The equations corresponding to the target application are written in symbolic notation and generators for different architectures can be added independent of the application. Additionally, this symbolic interface also makes our code extensible, and as such has been designed to easily accommodate many existing algorithms in astrophysics for plasma dynamics and radiation hydrodynamics. Our adaptive meshing algorithms and data-structures have been optimized for modern architectures with deep memory hierarchies. This enables our framework to have achieve excellent performance and scalability on modern leadership architectures. We demonstrate excellent weak scalability up to 131K cores on ORNL's Titan for binary mergers for mass ratios up to 100.

Measuring eccentricity in binary black hole inspirals with gravitational waves

When binary black holes form in the field, it is expected that their orbits typically circularize before coalescence. In galactic nuclei and globular clusters, binary black holes can form dynamically. Recent results suggest that $\approx5\%$ of mergers in globular clusters result from three-body interactions. These three-body interactions are expected to induce significant orbital eccentricity $\gtrsim 0.1$ when they enter the Advanced LIGO band at a gravitational-wave frequency of 10 Hz. Measurements of binary black hole eccentricity therefore provide a means for determining whether or not dynamic formation is the primary channel for producing binary black hole mergers. We present a framework for performing Bayesian parameter estimation on gravitational-wave observations of black hole inspirals. Using this framework, and employing the non-spinning, inspiral-only EccentricFD waveform approximant, we determine the minimum detectable eccentricity for an event with masses and distance similar to GW150914. At design sensitivity, we find that the current generation of advanced observatories will be sensitive to orbital eccentricities of $\gtrsim0.05$ at a gravitational-wave frequency of 10 Hz, demonstrating that existing detectors can use eccentricity to distinguish between circular field binaries and globular cluster triples. We compare this result to eccentricity distributions predicted to result from three black hole binary formation channels, showing that measurements of eccentricity could be used to infer the population properties of binary black holes.

An acoustical analogue of a galactic-scale gravitational-wave detector

By precisely monitoring the “ticks” of Nature's most precise clocks (millisecond pulsars), scientists are trying to detect the “ripples in spacetime” (gravitational waves) produced by the inspirals of supermassive black holes in the centers of distant merging galaxies. Here, we describe a relatively simple demonstration that uses two metronomes and a microphone to illustrate several techniques used by pulsar astronomers to search for and detect gravitational waves. An adapted version of this demonstration could be used as an instructional laboratory investigation at the undergraduate level.

Three waves for quantum gravity

Using effective field theoretical methods, we show that besides the already observed gravitational waves, quantum gravity predicts two further massive classical fields leading to two new massive waves. We set a limit on the masses of these new modes using data from the Eöt-Wash experiment. We point out that the existence of these new states is a model independent prediction of quantum gravity. We then explain how these new classical fields could impact astrophysical processes and in particular the binary inspirals of neutron stars or black holes. We calculate the emission rate of these new states in binary inspirals astrophysical processes.

Massive Gravitational Waves from Black Hole Inspirals in Quantum Gravity

We show that alongside the already observed gravitational waves, quantum gravity predicts the existence of two additional massive classical fields and thus two new massive waves. We set a limit on their masses using data from Eöt-Wash-like experiments. We point out that the existence of these new states is a model independent prediction of quantum gravity. We explain how these new classical fields could impact astrophysical processes and in particular the binary inspirals of black holes. We calculate the emission rate of these new states in binary inspirals astrophysical processes.

Gravitational Wave (GW) Classification, Space GW Detection Sensitivities and AMIGO (Astrodynamical Middle-frequency Interferometric GW Observatory)

After first reviewing the gravitational wave (GW) spectral classification. we discuss the sensitivities of GW detection in space aimed at low frequency band (100 nHz–100 mHz) and middle frequency band (100 mHz–10 Hz). The science goals are to detect GWs from (i) Supermassive Black Holes; (ii) Extreme-Mass-Ratio Black Hole Inspirals; (iii) Intermediate-Mass Black Holes; (iv) Galactic Compact Binaries; (v) Stellar-Size Black Hole Binaries; and (vi) Relic GW Background. The detector proposals have arm length ranging from 100 km to 1.35×109 km (9 AU) including (a) Solar orbiting detectors and (b) Earth orbiting detectors. We discuss especially the sensitivities in the frequency band 0.1-10 μHz and the middle frequency band (0.1 Hz–10 Hz). We propose and discuss AMIGO as an Astrodynamical Middlefrequency Interferometric GW Observatory.

Post-Newtonian templates for binary black-hole inspirals: the effect of the horizon fluxes and the secular change in the black-hole masses and spins

Black holes (BHs) in an inspiraling compact binary system absorb the gravitational-wave (GW) energy and angular-momentum fluxes across their event horizons and this leads to the secular change in their masses and spins during the inspiral phase. The goal of this paper is to present ready-to-use, post-Newtonian (PN) template families for spinning, non-precessing, binary BH inspirals in quasicircular orbits, including the PN and PN horizon-flux contributions as well as the correction due to the secular change in the BH masses and spins through PN order, respectively, in phase. We show that, for binary BHs observable by Advanced LIGO with high mass ratios (larger than ∼10) and large aligned-spins (larger than ), the mismatch between the frequency-domain template with and without the horizon-flux contribution is typically above the mark. For (supermassive) binary BHs observed by LISA, even a moderate mass-ratios and spins can produce a similar level of the mismatch. Meanwhile, the mismatch due to the secular time variations of the BH masses and spins is well below the mark in both cases, hence this is truly negligible. We also point out that neglecting the cubic-in-spin, point-particle phase term at PN order would deteriorate the effect of BH absorption in the template.

Fundamental frequencies and resonances from eccentric and precessing binary black hole inspirals

Binary black holes which are both eccentric and undergo precession remain unexplored in numerical simulations. We present simulations of such systems which cover about 50 orbits at comparatively high mass ratios 5 and 7. The configurations correspond to the generic motion of a nonspinning body in a Kerr spacetime, and are chosen to study the transition from finite mass-ratio inspirals to point particle motion in Kerr. We develop techniques to extract analogs of the three fundamental frequencies of Kerr geodesics, compare our frequencies to those of Kerr, and show that the differences are consistent with self-force corrections entering at first order in mass ratio. This analysis also locates orbital resonances where the ratios of our frequencies take rational values. At the considered mass ratios, the binaries pass through resonances in one to two resonant cycles, and we find no discernible effects on the orbital evolution. We also compute the decay of eccentricity during the inspiral and find good agreement with the leading order post-Newtonian prediction.