Search for gravitational waves from high-mass-ratio compact-binary mergers of stellar mass and sub-solar mass black holes

Abstract

We present the first search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of stellar mass and sub-solar mass black holes with masses between $20-100{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and $0.01-1{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }($10 - 10^3${\mathrm{M}}_J)$, respectively. The observation of a single sub-solar mass black hole would establish the existence of primordial black holes and a possible component of dark matter. We search the $\sim 164$ days of public LIGO data from 2015-2017 when LIGO-Hanford and LIGO-Livingston were simultaneously observing. We find no significant candidate gravitational-wave signals. Using this non-detection, we place a $90\%$ upper limit on the rate of $30-0.01{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and $30-0.1{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ mergers at $<1.2\times 10^6$ and $<1.6\times 10^4{\mathrm{Gpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$, respectively. If we consider binary formation through direct gravitational-wave braking, this kind of merger would be exceedingly rare if only the lighter black hole were primordial in origin ($<10^{-4}{\mathrm{Gpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$). If both black holes are primordial in origin, we constrain the contribution of $1(0.1){\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ black holes to dark matter to $<0.3(3)\%$.

arXiv comment9 pages, 5 figures, supplemental material at https://github.com/gwastro/stellar-pbh-search, updated to match version accepted by PRL

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