Search for gravitational waves from binary black hole inspiral, merger and ringdown

TL;DR

This paper reports a comprehensive search for gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers using the full waveform model, setting upper limits on merger rates based on LIGO data from 2005-2007.

Contribution

First modeled search using complete binary black hole waveforms from inspiral to ringdown, covering a broad mass range with no detections but establishing rate limits.

Findings

No gravitational wave signals detected.

Upper limit on merger rate: 2.0 per Mpc^3 per Myr for certain mass range.

Constrained binary black hole merger rates with negligible spin.

Abstract

We present the first modeled search for gravitational waves using the complete binary black hole gravitational waveform from inspiral through the merger and ringdown for binaries with negligible component spin. We searched approximately 2 years of LIGO data taken between November 2005 and September 2007 for systems with component masses of 1-99 solar masses and total masses of 25-100 solar masses. We did not detect any plausible gravitational-wave signals but we do place upper limits on the merger rate of binary black holes as a function of the component masses in this range. We constrain the rate of mergers for binary black hole systems with component masses between 19 and 28 solar masses and negligible spin to be no more than 2.0 per Mpc^3 per Myr at 90% confidence.