Testing the"no-hair" nature of binary black holes using the consistency of multipolar gravitational radiation

Abstract

Gravitational-wave (GW) observations of binary black holes offer the best probes of the relativistic, strong-field regime of gravity. Gravitational radiation, in the leading order is quadrupolar. However, non-quadrupole (higher-order) modes make appreciable contribution to the radiation from binary black holes with large mass ratios and misaligned spins. The multipolar structure of the radiation is fully determined by the intrinsic parameters (masses and spin angular momenta of the companion black holes) of a binary in quasi-circular orbit. Following our previous work \cite{Dhanpal:2018ufk}, we develop multiple ways of testing the consistency of the observed GW signal with the expected multipolar structure of radiation from binary black holes in general relativity. We call this a "no-hair" test of binary black holes as this is similar to testing the "no-hair" theorem for isolated black holes through mutual consistency of the quasi-normal mode spectrum. We use Bayesian inference on simulated GW signals that are consistent/inconsistent with binary black holes in GR to demonstrate the power of the proposed tests. We also make estimate systematic errors arising as a result of neglecting companion spins.

10 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Gravitational Waves and Gamma-rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A
• Accurate inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveforms for non-spinning black-hole binaries including the effect of subdominant modes
• Projected constraints on the dispersion of gravitational waves using advanced ground- and space-based interferometers

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