TY - JOUR

T1 - Parameter estimation and statistical significance of echoes following black hole signals in the first Advanced LIGO observing run

AU - Nielsen, Alex B.

AU - Birnholtz, Ofek

AU - Westerweck, Julian

AU - Capano, Collin

N1 - Funding Information: O. B. acknowledges the National Science Foundation (NSF) for financial support from Grant No. PHY-1607520. This work was supported by the Max Planck Gesellschaft and we thank the Atlas cluster computing team at AEI Hanover. This research has made use of data, software and/or web tools obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (https://gw-openscience.org), a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration. LIGO is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Virgo is funded by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Italian Istituto Nazionale della Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and the Dutch Nikhef, with contributions by Polish and Hungarian institutes.

PY - 2019/5/7

Y1 - 2019/5/7

N2 - Searching for black hole echo signals with gravitational waves provides a means of probing the near-horizon regime of these objects. We demonstrate a pipeline to efficiently search for these signals in gravitational wave data and calculate model selection probabilities between signal and no-signal hypotheses. As an example of its use we calculate Bayes factors for the Abedi-Dykaar-Afshordi (ADA) model on events in LIGO's first observing run and compare to existing results in the literature. We discuss the benefits of using a full likelihood exploration over existing search methods that used template banks and calculated p-values. We use the waveforms of ADA, although the method is easily extendable to other waveforms. With these waveforms we are able to demonstrate a range of echo amplitudes that is already is ruled out by the data.

AB - Searching for black hole echo signals with gravitational waves provides a means of probing the near-horizon regime of these objects. We demonstrate a pipeline to efficiently search for these signals in gravitational wave data and calculate model selection probabilities between signal and no-signal hypotheses. As an example of its use we calculate Bayes factors for the Abedi-Dykaar-Afshordi (ADA) model on events in LIGO's first observing run and compare to existing results in the literature. We discuss the benefits of using a full likelihood exploration over existing search methods that used template banks and calculated p-values. We use the waveforms of ADA, although the method is easily extendable to other waveforms. With these waveforms we are able to demonstrate a range of echo amplitudes that is already is ruled out by the data.

KW - gr-qc

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066451312&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.99.104012

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.99.104012

M3 - Article

VL - 99

JO - Phys. Rev. D

JF - Phys. Rev. D

SN - 1550-2368

IS - 10

M1 - 104012

ER -