Prospects for intermediate mass black hole binary searches with advanced gravitational-wave detectors

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the sensitivity of upcoming advanced gravitational-wave detectors to intermediate mass black hole binaries, estimating detection ranges and potential event rates to explore these elusive objects.

Contribution

It presents the first comprehensive analysis of advanced detectors' ability to detect IMBHBs across a wide mass range and estimates potential observation rates.

Findings

Detectors can detect IMBHBs up to a few Gpc away.

Expected detection rates could reach tens of events per year.

Results suggest a promising chance to observe intermediate mass black holes.

Abstract

We estimated the sensitivity of the upcoming advanced, ground-based gravitational-wave observatories (the upgraded LIGO and Virgo and the KAGRA interferometers) to coalescing intermediate mass black hole binaries (IMBHB). We added waveforms modeling the gravitational radiation emitted by IMBHBs to detectors' simulated data and searched for the injected signals with the coherent WaveBurst algorithm. The tested binary's parameter space covers non-spinning IMBHBs with source-frame total masses between 50 and 1050 $\text{M}_{\odot}$ and mass ratios between $1/6$ and 1$\,$. We found that advanced detectors could be sensitive to these systems up to a range of a few Gpc. A theoretical model was adopted to estimate the expected observation rates, yielding up to a few tens of events per year. Thus, our results indicate that advanced detectors will have a reasonable chance to collect the first direct evidence for intermediate mass black holes and open a new, intriguing channel for probing the Universe over cosmological scales.