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Article
GW170814: A Three-detector Observation of Gravitational Waves From a Binary Black Hole Coalescence
Faculty Publications
  • Tiffany Summerscales, Andrews University
  • LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-6-2017
Keywords
  • Binary black hole,
  • Gravitational waves,
  • Coalescence
Abstract

On August 14, 2017 at 10∶30:43 UTC, the Advanced Virgo detector and the two Advanced LIGO detectors coherently observed a transient gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes, with a false-alarm rate of ≲1 in 27 000 years. The signal was observed with a three-detector network matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 18. The inferred masses of the initial black holes are 30.5+5.7−3.0M⊙ and 25.3+2.8−4.2M⊙ (at the 90% credible level). The luminosity distance of the source is 540+130−210  Mpc, corresponding to a redshift of z=0.11+0.03−0.04. A network of three detectors improves the sky localization of the source, reducing the area of the 90% credible region from 1160   deg2 using only the two LIGO detectors to 60  deg2 using all three detectors. For the first time, we can test the nature of gravitational-wave polarizations from the antenna response of the LIGO-Virgo network, thus enabling a new class of phenomenological tests of gravity.

Journal Title
Physical Review Letters
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.141101
First Department
Physics
Citation Information
Tiffany Summerscales and LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration. "GW170814: A Three-detector Observation of Gravitational Waves From a Binary Black Hole Coalescence" Vol. 119 (2017) p. 141101
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/tiffany_summerscales/97/