Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T23:17:45.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

What was the Initial Mass of Merging Black Holes in GW150914 ?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2017

Hiromichi Tagawa
Affiliation:
University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan email: [email protected]
Masayuki Umemura
Affiliation:
Center for Computational Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8577, Japan email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Recently, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has detected the gravitational wave (GW) event, GW150914, as a result of the merger of a ~30 M black hole (BH) binary. So far, the merger of stellar-mass BHs has been thought to result from the evolution of binary stars. Here, we propose a novel path of the merger stemming from non-binary isolated stars. In our previous studies, we have found that multiple non-binary stellar-mass BHs whose separations are larger than 1000 AU can merge with each other under the gas-rich environments through the gas dynamical friction and three-body interaction. In this case, a considerable amount of gas can accrete onto BHs before the merger, that is, the initial mass of BHs can be lower than 30 M. To explore this possibility, we perform post-Newtonian N-body simulations on mergers of accreting stellar-mass BHs. Based on our simulations, we find that the BH merger in GW150914 from smaller seed BHs is likely to occur in galactic nuclear regions or dense interstellar cloud cores. Furthermore, we roughly estimate event rates to be ~0.4 yr−1 in galactic nuclear regions and ~8 yr−1 in dense interstellar cloud cores.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2017 

References

Abbott, B., et al., 2016, Phys. Rev. Lett., 116, 061102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, T. 2005, Physics Reports, 419, 65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belczynski, K., Holz, D. E., Bulik, T., & O'Shaughnessy, Richard. 2016, Nature, 534, 512 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Remillard, R. A. & McClintock, J. E. 2006, ARA&A, 44, 49 Google Scholar
Tagawa, H., Umemura, M., Gouda, N., Yano, T., & Yamai, Y. 2015, MNRAS, 451, 2174 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagawa, H., Umemura, M., & Gouda, N. 2016, MNRAS, 462, 3812 CrossRefGoogle Scholar