An optimized PyCBC search for gravitational waves from intermediate-mass black hole mergers

Abstract

The detection of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) i.e. those with mass $\sim 100$-$10^5{M}_{\odot }$, is an emerging goal of gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy with wide implications for cosmology and tests of strong-field gravity. Current PyCBC-based searches for compact binary mergers, which matched filter the detector data against a set of template waveforms, have so far detected or confirmed several GW events. However, the sensitivity of these searches to signals arising from mergers of IMBH binaries is not optimal. Here, we present a new optimised PyCBC-based search for such signals. Our search benefits from using a targeted template bank, stricter signal-noise discriminators and a lower matched-filter frequency cut-off. In particular, for a population of simulated signals with isotropically distributed spins, we improve the sensitive volume-time product over previous PyCBC-based searches, at an inverse false alarm rate of 100 years, by a factor of 1.5 to 3 depending on the total binary mass. We deploy this new search on Advanced LIGO-Virgo data from the first half of the third observing run. The search does not identify any new significant IMBH binaries but does confirm the detection of the short-duration GW signal GW190521 with a false alarm rate of 1 in 727 years.

v2; 15 pages, 10 figures; Published in Physical Review D

References in corpus (20)

• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Advanced LIGO
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• An improved effective-one-body model of spinning, nonprecessing binary black holes for the era of gravitational-wave astrophysics with advanced detectors
• Scientific Objectives of Einstein Telescope
• The LIGO Open Science Center
• Implementing a search for aligned-spin neutron star -- black hole systems with advanced ground based gravitational wave detectors
• The MBTA Pipeline for Detecting Compact Binary Coalescences in the Third LIGO-Virgo Observing Run
• Detecting binary neutron star systems with spin in advanced gravitational-wave detectors
• Localization of gravitational wave sources with networks of advanced detectors
• GW190521 may be an intermediate mass ratio inspiral
• A template bank to search for gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries I: physical models
• Gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries: hexagonal template placement and its efficiency in detecting physical signals
• The Population III origin of GW190521
• Building a stochastic template bank for detecting massive black hole binaries
• Sensitivity of gravitational wave searches to the full signal of intermediate mass black hole binaries during the LIGO O1 Science Run
• A hierarchical search for gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binary mergers

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Using machine learning to auto-tune chi-squared tests for gravitational wave searches