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Article
GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of 150 M
Physical Review Letters
  • R. Abbott, California Institute of Technology
  • T. D. Abbott, Louisiana State University
  • S. Abraham, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics India
  • F. Acernese, Università di Salerno
  • K. Ackley, Monash University
  • C. Adams, LIGO Livingston
  • R. X. Adhikari, California Institute of Technology
  • V. B. Adya, The Australian National University
  • C. Affeldt, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
  • M. Agathos, Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena
  • K. Agatsuma, University of Birmingham
  • N. Aggarwal, Northwestern University
  • O. D. Aguiar, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais
  • A. Aich, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
  • L. Aiello, Gran Sasso Science Institute
  • A. Ain, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics India
  • P. Ajith, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
  • S. Akcay, Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena
  • G. Allen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • A. Allocca, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Pisa
  • P. A. Altin, The Australian National University
  • A. Amato, Université de Lyon
  • S. Anand, California Institute of Technology
  • A. Ananyeva, California Institute of Technology
  • S. B. Anderson, California Institute of Technology
  • W. G. Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  • S. V. Angelova, University of Strathclyde
  • S. Ansoldi, Università degli Studi di Udine
  • S. Antier, APC - AstroParticule et Cosmologie
  • S. Appert, California Institute of Technology
  • K. Arai, California Institute of Technology
  • Tiffany Z. Summerscales, Andrews University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2-2020
Abstract

© 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. On May 21, 2019 at 03:02:29 UTC Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo observed a short duration gravitational-wave signal, GW190521, with a three-detector network signal-to-noise ratio of 14.7, and an estimated false-alarm rate of 1 in 4900 yr using a search sensitive to generic transients. If GW190521 is from a quasicircular binary inspiral, then the detected signal is consistent with the merger of two black holes with masses of 85-14+21 Mm and 66-18+17 Mm (90% credible intervals). We infer that the primary black hole mass lies within the gap produced by (pulsational) pair-instability supernova processes, with only a 0.32% probability of being below 65 Mm. We calculate the mass of the remnant to be 142-16+28 Mm, which can be considered an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH). The luminosity distance of the source is 5.3-2.6+2.4 Gpc, corresponding to a redshift of 0.82-0.34+0.28. The inferred rate of mergers similar to GW190521 is 0.13-0.11+0.30 Gpc-3 yr-1.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.101102
First Department
Physics
Acknowledgements
Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.101102
Citation Information
R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, S. Abraham, F. Acernese, et al.. "GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of 150 M" Physical Review Letters Vol. 125 Iss. 10 (2020)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/tiffany_summerscales/176/