Published in

American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters, 6(116), 2016

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.116.061102

Centennial of General Relativity, p. 291-311

DOI: 10.1142/9789814699662_0011

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

Journal article published in 2016 by J. F. J. den van Brand, R. Abbott, Jfj F. J.~F.~J van den Brand, Jv V. van Heijningen, Aa A.~A van Veggel, T. D. Abbott, Karl Wette, Matthew Pitkin, Abbott T. D, Christopher P. L. Berry, Madeline Wade ORCID, Adhikari R. X, C. Affeldt, L. E. Wade, M. Agathos and other authors.
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

16 pages, 4 figures, see paper for full list of authors ; International audience ; On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of $1.0 \times 10^{-21}$. It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203 000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1 {σ}. The source lies at a luminosity distance of $410^{+160}_{-180}$ Mpc corresponding to a redshift $z = 0.09^{+0.03}_{-0.04}$. In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are $36^{+5}_{-4} M_⊙$ and $29^{+4}_{-4} M_⊙$, and the final black hole mass is $62^{+4}_{-4} M_⊙$, with $3.0^{+0.5}_{-0.5} M_⊙ c^2$ radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals.These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.