Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 221402 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Physical review letters |
| Volume | 131 |
| Issue number | 22 |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Nov 2023 |
Abstract
When two black holes merge, the late stage of gravitational wave emission is a superposition of exponentially damped sinusoids. According to the black hole no-hair theorem, this ringdown spectrum depends only on the mass and angular momentum of the final black hole. An observation of more than one ringdown mode can test this fundamental prediction of general relativity. Here, we provide strong observational evidence for a multimode black hole ringdown spectrum using the gravitational wave event GW190521, with a maximum Bayes factor of 56±1 (1σ uncertainty) preferring two fundamental modes over one. The dominant mode is the m=2 harmonic, and the subdominant mode corresponds to the m=3 harmonic. The amplitude of this mode relative to the dominant harmonic is estimated to be A330/A220=0.2-0.1+0.2. We estimate the redshifted mass and dimensionless spin of the final black hole as 330-40+30M and 0.86-0.11+0.06, respectively. We find that the final black hole is consistent with the no-hair theorem and constrain the fractional deviation from general relativity of the subdominant mode's frequency to be -0.01-0.09+0.08.
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In: Physical review letters, Vol. 131, No. 22, 221402, 28.11.2023.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Multimode Quasinormal Spectrum from a Perturbed Black Hole
AU - Capano, Collin D.
AU - Cabero, Miriam
AU - Westerweck, Julian
AU - Abedi, Jahed
AU - Kastha, Shilpa
AU - Nitz, Alexander H.
AU - Wang, Yi Fan
AU - Nielsen, Alex B.
AU - Krishnan, Badri
N1 - Funding Information: The authors thank Ofek Birnholtz, Jose Luis Jaramillo, Reinhard Prix, Bruce Allen, Evan Goetz, Saul Teukolsky, Maximiliano Isi, Juan Calderón-Bustillo, Abhay Ashtekar, and Bangalore Sathyaprakash for useful discussions and Xisco Jiménez Forteza for a careful reading of this manuscript. We thank also the Atlas Computational Cluster team at the Albert Einstein Institute in Hanover for assistance. M. C. acknowledges funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). This research has made use of data obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center , a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration. LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO are funded by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) who also gratefully acknowledge the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. Virgo is funded, through the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and the Dutch Nikhef, with contributions by institutions from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Monaco, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.
PY - 2023/11/28
Y1 - 2023/11/28
N2 - When two black holes merge, the late stage of gravitational wave emission is a superposition of exponentially damped sinusoids. According to the black hole no-hair theorem, this ringdown spectrum depends only on the mass and angular momentum of the final black hole. An observation of more than one ringdown mode can test this fundamental prediction of general relativity. Here, we provide strong observational evidence for a multimode black hole ringdown spectrum using the gravitational wave event GW190521, with a maximum Bayes factor of 56±1 (1σ uncertainty) preferring two fundamental modes over one. The dominant mode is the m=2 harmonic, and the subdominant mode corresponds to the m=3 harmonic. The amplitude of this mode relative to the dominant harmonic is estimated to be A330/A220=0.2-0.1+0.2. We estimate the redshifted mass and dimensionless spin of the final black hole as 330-40+30M and 0.86-0.11+0.06, respectively. We find that the final black hole is consistent with the no-hair theorem and constrain the fractional deviation from general relativity of the subdominant mode's frequency to be -0.01-0.09+0.08.
AB - When two black holes merge, the late stage of gravitational wave emission is a superposition of exponentially damped sinusoids. According to the black hole no-hair theorem, this ringdown spectrum depends only on the mass and angular momentum of the final black hole. An observation of more than one ringdown mode can test this fundamental prediction of general relativity. Here, we provide strong observational evidence for a multimode black hole ringdown spectrum using the gravitational wave event GW190521, with a maximum Bayes factor of 56±1 (1σ uncertainty) preferring two fundamental modes over one. The dominant mode is the m=2 harmonic, and the subdominant mode corresponds to the m=3 harmonic. The amplitude of this mode relative to the dominant harmonic is estimated to be A330/A220=0.2-0.1+0.2. We estimate the redshifted mass and dimensionless spin of the final black hole as 330-40+30M and 0.86-0.11+0.06, respectively. We find that the final black hole is consistent with the no-hair theorem and constrain the fractional deviation from general relativity of the subdominant mode's frequency to be -0.01-0.09+0.08.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178166566&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.221402
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.221402
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85178166566
VL - 131
JO - Physical review letters
JF - Physical review letters
SN - 0031-9007
IS - 22
M1 - 221402
ER -