Search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of sub-solar mass binaries in the first half of Advanced LIGO and Virgo's third observing run

Abstract

We present a search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of sub-solar mass black hole binaries using data from the first half of Advanced LIGO and Virgo's third observing run. The observation of a sub-solar mass black hole merger may be an indication of primordial origin; primordial black holes may contribute to the dark matter distribution. We search for black hole mergers where the primary mass is $0.1-7M_{\odot }$ and the secondary mass is $0.1-1M_{\odot }$. A variety of models predict the production and coalescence of binaries containing primordial black holes; some involve dynamical assembly which may allow for residual eccentricity to be observed. For component masses $>0.5M_{\odot }$, we also search for sources in eccentric orbits, measured at a reference gravitational-wave frequency of 10 Hz, up to $e_{10}\sim 0.3$. We find no convincing candidates and place new upper limits on the rate of primordial black hole mergers. The merger rate of 0.5-0.5 (1.0-1.0)~$M_{\odot }$ sources is $<7100(1200)$ Gpc${}^{-3}$yr${}^{-1}$. Our limits are $\sim 3-4$ times more constraining than prior analyses. Finally, we demonstrate how our limits can be used to constrain arbitrary models of the primordial black hole mass distribution and merger rate.

7 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, v3 updated to match PRL, supplementary materials at https://github.com/gwastro/subsolar-o3a-search

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Compact Binary Merger Rate in Dark-Matter Spikes