Search for gravitational waves from binary black hole inspirals in LIGO data

TL;DR

This paper details a search for gravitational waves from binary black hole inspirals in LIGO data, focusing on systems with 3-20 solar masses, but found no detectable events in 385.6 hours of data.

Contribution

It presents the first targeted search for binary black hole inspirals in LIGO data within a specific mass range, establishing detection efficiency and setting upper limits.

Findings

No gravitational wave events detected in the data

Detection efficiency of at least 90% for certain binaries up to 1 Mpc

Provides constraints on the rate of binary black hole mergers

Abstract

We report on a search for gravitational waves from binary black hole inspirals in the data from the second science run of the LIGO interferometers. The search focused on binary systems with component masses between 3 and 20 solar masses. Optimally oriented binaries with distances up to 1 Mpc could be detected with efficiency of at least 90%. We found no events that could be identified as gravitational waves in the 385.6 hours of data that we searched.