Black hole spectroscopy in environments: detectability prospects

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the environment around black holes influences the gravitational wave ringdown signal, concluding that for planned detectors, environmental effects are generally indistinguishable from vacuum signals, supporting current measurement methods.

Contribution

It provides an analysis showing environmental effects on black hole ringdowns are negligible for planned detectors, validating the use of vacuum models in parameter estimation.

Findings

Ringdown signals are indistinguishable from vacuum cases for planned detectors.

Environmental effects do not significantly impact black hole property measurements.

Spectral instabilities are not relevant observationally.

Abstract

The ringdown phase following a binary black hole coalescence is a powerful tool for measuring properties of the remnant black hole. Future gravitational wave detectors will increase the precision of these measurements and may be sensitive to the environment surrounding the black hole. This work examines how environments affect the ringdown from a binary coalescence. Our analysis shows that for astrophysical parameters and sensitivity of planned detectors, the ringdown signal is indistinguishable from its vacuum counterpart, suggesting that ringdown-only analyses can reliably extract the (redshifted) mass and spin of the remnant black hole. These conclusions include models with spectral instabilities, suggesting that these are not relevant from an observational viewpoint. Deviations from inspiral-only estimates could then enhance the characterisation of environmental effects present during the coalescence.