GW170817A as a Hierarchical Black Hole Merger

TL;DR

This paper suggests that the gravitational-wave event GW170817A likely originated from a hierarchical black hole merger in galactic nuclei, characterized by higher mass and spin, rather than from an isolated binary system.

Contribution

It provides evidence that GW170817A is consistent with a hierarchical merger origin, highlighting the importance of such processes in black hole formation.

Findings

GW170817A's parameters favor a hierarchical merger origin.

Hierarchical mergers produce higher mass and spin signatures.

Odds ratio > 10^3 supports hierarchical origin over isolated binaries.

Abstract

Despite the rapidly growing number of stellar-mass binary black hole mergers discovered through gravitational waves, the origin of these binaries is still not known. In galactic centers, black holes can be brought to each others' proximity by dynamical processes, resulting in mergers. It is also possible that black holes formed in previous mergers encounter new black holes, resulting in so-called hierarchical mergers. Hierarchical events carry signatures such as higher-than usual black hole mass and spin. Here we show that the recently reported gravitational-wave candidate, GW170817A, could be the result of such a hierarchical merger. In particular, its chirp mass $\sim40$ M$_\odot$ and effective spin of $\chi_{\rm eff}\sim0.5$ are the typically expected values from hierarchical mergers within the disks of active galactic nuclei. We find that the reconstructed parameters of GW170817A strongly favor a hierarchical merger origin over having been produced by an isolated binary origin (with an Odds ratio of $>10^3$, after accounting for differences between the expected rates of hierarchical versus isolated mergers)