Prospects for Detection of Extragalactic Stellar Black Hole Binaries in the Nearby Universe

TL;DR

This paper assesses the potential to detect extragalactic stellar black hole binaries using space-based gravitational wave observatories, focusing on nearby galaxies within 30 Mpc and estimating detection rates based on simulated populations.

Contribution

It extends previous work by modeling binary black hole populations in nearby galaxies to estimate the likelihood of detection with future space-based detectors.

Findings

Estimated detection rates for nearby galaxies

Analysis of selection effects for gravitational wave detection

Implications for future gravitational wave observatories

Abstract

Stellar mass black hole binaries have individual masses between 10-80 solar masses. These systems may emit gravitational waves at frequencies detectable at Megaparsec distances by space-based gravitational wave observatories. In a previous study, we determined the selection effects of observing these systems with detectors similar to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna by using a generated population of binary black holes that covered a reasonable parameter space and calculating their signal-to-noise ratio. We further our study by populating the galaxies in our nearby (less than 30 Mpc) universe with binary black hole systems drawn from a distribution found in the Synthetic Universe to ultimately investigate the likely event rate of detectable binaries from galaxies in the nearby universe.