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Observational tests of the black hole area increase law

Journal Article · · Physical Review D
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [3]
  1. Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Hannover (Germany); Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany)
  2. Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Hannover (Germany); Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany); Rochester Institute of Technology, NY (United States)
  3. Syracuse Univ., NY (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
The black hole area theorem implies that when two black holes merge, the area of the final black hole should be greater than the sum of the areas of the two original black holes. In this study, we examine how this prediction can be tested with gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes. By separately fitting the early inspiral and final ringdown stages, we calculate the posterior distributions for the masses and spins of the two initial and the final black holes. This yields posterior distributions for the change in the area and thus a statistical test of the validity of the area increase law. We illustrate this method with a GW150914-like binary black hole waveform calculated using numerical relativity, and detector sensitivities representative of both the first observing run and the design configuration of Advanced LIGO. We obtain a ~74.6 % probability that the simulated signal is consistent with the area theorem with current sensitivity, improving to ~99.9 % when Advanced LIGO reaches design sensitivity. Lastly, an important ingredient in our test is a method of estimating when the postmerger signal is well fit by a damped sinusoid ringdown waveform.
Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1484646
Report Number(s):
LA-UR--18-24294
Journal Information:
Physical Review D, Journal Name: Physical Review D Journal Issue: 12 Vol. 97; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (17)

Testing the nature of dark compact objects: a status report journal July 2019
PyCBC Inference: A Python-based Parameter Estimation Toolkit for Compact Binary Coalescence Signals journal January 2019
Multiband gravitational-wave astronomy: Observing binary inspirals with a decihertz detector, B-DECIGO journal July 2018
Black-hole spectroscopy by making full use of gravitational-wave modeling journal October 2018
Empirical tests of the black hole no-hair conjecture using gravitational-wave observations journal November 2018
Existence and stability of marginally trapped surfaces in black-hole spacetimes journal March 2019
Parameter estimation and statistical significance of echoes following black hole signals in the first Advanced LIGO observing run journal May 2019
Observational black hole spectroscopy: A time-domain multimode analysis of GW150914 journal June 2019
Testing the No-Hair Theorem with GW150914 journal September 2019
Measuring Spin of the Remnant Black Hole from Maximum Amplitude journal October 2019
Black Hole Ringdown: The Importance of Overtones journal December 2019
Multiband Gravitational-Wave Astronomy: Observing binary inspirals with a decihertz detector, B-DECIGO text January 2018
Empirical tests of the black hole no-hair conjecture using gravitational-wave observations text January 2018
PyCBC Inference: A Python-based parameter estimation toolkit for compact binary coalescence signals text January 2018
Observational Black Hole Spectroscopy: A time-domain multimode analysis of GW150914 text January 2019
Testing the nature of dark compact objects: a status report text January 2019
Testing the no-hair theorem with GW150914 text January 2019

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