Search for gravitational wave ringdowns from perturbed intermediate mass black holes in LIGO-Virgo data from 2005-2010

Abbott, B. P. and Abbott, R. and Abbott, T. and Abernathy, M. R. and Acernese, F. and Ackley, K. and Adams, C. and Adams, T. and Addesso, P. and Adhikari, R. X. and Affeldt, C. and Agathos, M. and Aggarwal, N. and Aguiar, O. D. and Ain, A. and Ajith, P. and Alemic, A. and Allen, B. and Allocca, A. and Amariutei, D. and Andersen, M. and Anderson, R. and Anderson, S. B. and Anderson, W. G. and Arai, K. and Araya, M. C. and Arceneaux, C. and Areeda, J. and Aston, S. M. and Astone, P. and Debreczeni, Gergely and Frei, Zsolt and Gondán, László and Nagy-Egri, Máté Ferenc and Rácz, István and Raffai, Péter and Vasúth, Mátyás Zsolt (2014) Search for gravitational wave ringdowns from perturbed intermediate mass black holes in LIGO-Virgo data from 2005-2010. PHYSICAL REVIEW D, 89 (10). ISSN 2470-0010

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Abstract

We report results from a search for gravitational waves produced by perturbed intermediate massblack holes (IMBH) in data collected by LIGO and Virgo between 2005 and 2010. The searchwas sensitive to astrophysical sources that produced damped sinusoid gravitational wave signals,also known as ringdowns, with frequency 50 ≤ f0/Hz ≤ 2000 and decay timescale 0.0001 . τ /s .0.1 characteristic of those produced in mergers of IMBH pairs. No significant gravitational wavecandidate was detected. We report upper limits on the astrophysical coalescence rates of IMBHs with total binary mass 50 ≤ M/M ≤ 450 and component mass ratios of either 1:1 or 4:1. For systems with total mass 100 ≤ M/M ≤ 150, we report a 90%-confidence upper limit on the rate of binary IMBH mergers with non-spinning and equal mass components of 6.9 × 10−8 Mpc−3yr−1.We also report a rate upper limit for ringdown waveforms from perturbed IMBHs, radiating 1% of their mass as gravitational waves in the fundamental, ` = m = 2, oscillation mode, that is nearly three orders of magnitude more stringent than previous results.

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