Search for gravitational wave ringdowns from perturbed black holes in LIGO S4 data

Abbott, B. et al. (2009) Search for gravitational wave ringdowns from perturbed black holes in LIGO S4 data. Physical Review D, 80(6), (doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.80.062001)

Abstract

According to general relativity a perturbed black hole will settle to a stationary configuration by the emission of gravitational radiation. Such a perturbation will occur, for example, in the coalescence of a black hole binary, following their inspiral and subsequent merger. At late times the waveform is a superposition of quasinormal modes, which we refer to as the ringdown. The dominant mode is expected to be the fundamental mode, l=m=2. Since this is a well-known waveform, matched filtering can be implemented to search for this signal using LIGO data. We present a search for gravitational waves from black hole ringdowns in the fourth LIGO science run S4, during which LIGO was sensitive to the dominant mode of perturbed black holes with masses in the range of 10M_⊙ to 500M_⊙, the regime of intermediate-mass black holes, to distances up to 300 Mpc. We present a search for gravitational waves from black hole ringdowns using data from S4. No gravitational wave candidates were found; we place a 90%-confidence upper limit on the rate of ringdowns from black holes with mass between 85M_⊙ and 390M_⊙ in the local universe, assuming a uniform distribution of sources, of 3.2×10^-5  yr^-1 Mpc-3=1.6×10^-3  yr^-1L10^-1,where L₁₀ is 10¹⁰ times the solar blue-light luminosity.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Grant, Mr Alastair and Messenger, Dr Christopher and Hammond, Professor Giles and Hild, Professor Stefan and Barr, Dr Bryan and Sorazu Lucio, Dr Borja and Reid, Professor Stuart and Edgar, Dr Matthew and Tokmakov, Dr Kirill and Veitch, Dr John and Plissi, Dr Michael and Heng, Professor Ik Siong and van Veggel, Dr Marielle and Newton, Dr Gavin and Rowan, Professor Sheila and Kumar, Mr Rahul and Martin, Dr Iain and Robertson, Professor Norna and Cumming, Dr Alan and Cunningham, Dr Liam and Woan, Professor Graham and Nelson, Mr John and Hough, Professor James and Huttner, Dr Sabina and Strain, Professor Kenneth and Jones, Mr Russell and Haughian, Dr Karen and Pitkin, Dr Matthew and Murray, Dr Peter
• Authors: Abbott, B., Abbott, R., Adhikari, R., Ajith, P., Allen, B., Allen, G., Amin, R., Anderson, S., Anderson, W., Arain, M., Araya, M., Armandula, H., Armor, P., Aso, Y., Aston, S., Aufmuth, P., Aulbert, C., Babak, S., Baker, P., Ballmer, S., Barker, C., Barker, D., Barr, B., Barriga, P., Barsotti, L., Barton, M., Bartos, I., Bassiri, R., Bastarrika, M., Behnke, B., Benacquista, M., Betzwieser, J., Beyersdorf, P., Bilenko, I., Billingsley, G., Biswas, R., Black, E., Blackburn, J., Blackburn, L., Blair, D., Bland, B., Bodiya, T., Bogue, L., Bork, R., Boschi, V., Bose, S., Brady, P., Braginsky, V., Brau, J., Bridges, D., Brinkmann, M., Brooks, A., Brown, D., Brummit, A., Brunet, G., Bullington, A., Buonanno, A., Burmeister, O., Byer, R., Cadonati, L., Camp, J., Cannizzo, J., Cannon, K., Cao, J., Cardenas, L., Cardoso, V., Caride, S., Castaldi, G., Caudill, S., Cavaglia, M., Cepeda, C., Chalermsongsak, T., Chalkley, E., Charlton, P., Chatterji, S., Chelkowski, S., Chen, Y., Christensen, N., Chung, C., Clark, D., Clark, J., Clayton, J., Cokelaer, T., Colacino, C., Conte, R., Cook, D., Corbitt, T., Cornish, N., Coward, D., Coyne, D., Creighton, J., Creighton, T., Cruise, A., Culter, R., Cumming, A., Cunningham, L., Danilishin, S., Danzmann, K., Daudert, B., Davies, G., Daw, E., DeBra, D., Degallaix, J., Dergachev, V., Desai, S., DeSalvo, R., Dhurandhar, S., Diaz, M., Dietz, A., Donovan, F., Dooley, K., Doomes, E., Drever, R., Dueck, J., Duke, I., Dumas, J., Dwyer, J., Echols, C., Edgar, M., Effler, A., Ehrens, P., Espinoza, E., Etzel, T., Evans, M., Evans, T., Fairhurst, S., Faltas, Y., Fan, Y., Fazi, D., Fehrmann, H., Finn, L., Flasch, K., Foley, S., Forrest, C., Fotopoulos, N., Franzen, A., Frede, M., Frei, M., Frei, Z., Freise, A., Frey, R., Fricke, T., Fritschel, P., Frolov, V., Fyffe, M., Galdi, V., Garofoli, J., Gholami, I., Giaime, J., Giampanis, S., Giardina, K., Goda, K., Goetz, E., Goggin, L., Gonzalez, G., Gorodetsky, M., Gossler, S., Gouaty, R., Grant, A., Gras, S., Gray, C., Gray, M., Greenhalgh, R., Gretarsson, A., Grimaldi, F., Grosso, R., Grote, H., Grunewald, S., Guenther, M., Gustafson, E., Gustafson, R., Hage, B., Hallam, J., Hammer, D., Hammond, G.D., Hanna, C., Hanson, J., Harms, J., Harry, G., Harry, I., Harstad, E., Haughian, K., Hayama, K., Heefner, J., Heng, I.S., Heptonstall, A., Hewitson, M., Hild, S., Hirose, E., Hoak, D., Hodge, K., Holt, K., Hosken, D., Hough, J., Hoyland, D., Hughey, B., Huttner, S.H., Ingram, D., Isogai, T., Ito, M., Ivanov, A., Johnson, B., Johnson, W., Jones, D., Jones, G., Jones, R., Ju, L., Kalmus, P., Kalogera, V., Kandhasamy, S., Kanner, J., Kasprzyk, D., Katsavounidis, E., Kawabe, K., Kawamura, S., Kawazoe, F., Kells, W., Keppel, D., Khalaidovski, A., Khalili, F., Khan, R., Khazanov, E., King, P., Kissel, J., Klimenko, S., Kokeyama, K., Kondrashov, V., Kopparapu, R., Koranda, S., Kozak, D., Krishnan, B., Kumar, R., Kwee, P., Lam, P., Landry, M., Lantz, B., Lazzarini, A., Lei, H., Lei, M., Leindecker, N., Leonor, I., Li, C., Lin, H., Lindquist, P., Littenberg, T., Lockerbie, N., Lodhia, D., Longo, M., Lormand, M., Lu, P., Lubinski, M., Lucianetti, A., Luck, H., Machenschalk, B., MacInnis, M., Mageswaran, M., Mailand, K., Mandel, I., Mandic, V., Marka, S., Marka, Z., Markosyan, A., Markowitz, J., Maros, E., Martin, I.W., Martin, R., Marx, J., Mason, K., Matichard, F., Matone, L., Matzner, R., Mavalvala, N., McCarthy, R., McClelland, D., McGuire, S., McHugh, M., McIntyre, G., McKechan, D., McKenzie, K., Mehmet, M., Melatos, A., Melissinos, A., Menendez, D., Mendell, G., Mercer, R., Meshkov, S., Messenger, C., Meyer, M., Miller, J., Minelli, J., Mino, Y., Mitrofanov, V., Mitselmakher, G., Mittleman, R., Miyakawa, O., Moe, B., Mohanty, S., Mohapatra, S., Moreno, G., Morioka, T., Mors, K., Mossavi, K., MowLowry, C., Mueller, G., Muller-Ebhardt, H., Muhammad, D., Mukherjee, S., Mukhopadhyay, H., Mullavey, A., Munch, J., Murray, P.G., Myers, E., Myers, J., Nash, T., Nelson, J., Newton, G., Nishizawa, A., Numata, K., O'Dell, J., O'Reilly, B., O'Shaughnessy, R., Ochsner, E., Ogin, G., Ottaway, D., Ottens, R., Overmier, H., Owen, B., Pan, Y., Pankow, C., Papa, M., Parameshwaraiah, V., Patel, P., Pedraza, M., Penn, S., Perraca, A., Pierro, V., Pinto, I., Pitkin, M., Pletsch, H., Plissi, M., Postiglione, F., Principe, M., Prix, R., Prokhorov, L., Punken, O., Quetschke, V., Raab, F., Rabeling, D., Radkins, H., Raffai, P., Raics, Z., Rainer, N., Rakhmanov, M., Raymond, V., Reed, C., Reed, T., Rehbein, H., Reid, S., Reitze, D., Riesen, R., Riles, K., Rivera, B., Roberts, P., Robertson, N., Robinson, C., Robinson, E., Roddy, S., Rover, C., Rollins, J., Romano, J., Romie, J., Rowan, S., Ruediger, A., Russell, P., Ryan, K., Sakata, S., de la Jordana, L., Sandberg, V., Sannibale, V., Santamaria, L., Saraf, S., Sarin, P., Sathyaprakash, B., Sato, S., Satterthwaite, M., Saulson, P., Savage, R., Savov, P., Scanlan, M., Schilling, R., Schnabel, R., Schofield, R., Schulz, B., Schutz, B., Schwinberg, P., Scott, J., Scott, S., Searle, A., Sears, B., Seifert, F., Sellers, D., Sengupta, A., Sergeev, A., Shapiro, B., Shawhan, P., Shoemaker, D., Sibley, A., Siemens, X., Sigg, D., Sinha, S., Sintes, A., Slagmolen, B., Slutsky, J., Smith, J., Smith, M., Smith, N., Somiya, K., Sorazu, B., Stein, A., Stein, L., Steplewski, S., Stochino, A., Stone, R., Strain, K.A., Strigin, S., Stroeer, A., Stuver, A., Summerscales, T., Sun, K., Sung, M., Sutton, P., Szokoly, G., Talukder, D., Tang, L., Tanner, D., Tarabrin, S., Taylor, J., Taylor, R., Thacker, J., Thorne, K., Thorne, K., Thuring, A., Tokmakov, K.V., Torres, C., Torrie, C., Traylor, G., Trias, M., Ugolini, D., Ulmen, J., Urbanek, K., Vahlbruch, H., Vallisneri, M., Van den Broeck, C., van der Sluys, M., van Veggel, A., Vass, S., Vaulin, R., Vecchio, A., Veitch, J., Veitch, P., Veltkamp, C., Villar, A., Vorvick, C., Vyachanin, S., Waldman, S., Wallace, L., Ward, R., Weidner, A., Weinert, M., Weinstein, A., Weiss, R., Wen, L., Wen, S., Wette, K., Whelan, J., Whitcomb, S., Whiting, B., Wilkinson, C., Willems, P., Williams, H., Williams, L., Willke, B., Wilmut, I., Winkelmann, L., Winkler, W., Wipf, C., Wiseman, A., Woan, G., Wooley, R., Worden, J., Wu, W., Yakushin, I., Yamamoto, H., Yan, Z., Yoshida, S., Zanolin, M., Zhang, J., Zhang, L., Zhao, C., Zotov, N., Zucker, M., zur Muhlen, H., and Zweizig, J.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Research Centre: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy > Institute for Gravitational Research
• Journal Name: Physical Review D
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• ISSN: 1550-7998
• ISSN (Online): 1089-4918

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
45931	2	Investigations in Gravitational Radiation.	Sheila Rowan	Science & Technologies Facilities Council (STFC)	ST/I001085/1	Physics and Astronomy