Black hole spectroscopy horizons for current and future gravitational wave detectors

Abstract

Black hole spectroscopy is the proposal to observe multiple quasinormal modes in the ringdown of a binary black hole merger. In addition to the fundamental quadrupolar mode, overtones and higher harmonics may be present and detectable in the gravitational wave signal, allowing for tests of the no-hair theorem. We analyze in detail the strengths and weaknesses of the standard Rayleigh criterion supplied with a Fisher matrix error estimation, and we find that the criterion is useful, but too restrictive. Therefore we motivate the use of a conservative high Bayes factor threshold to obtain the black hole spectroscopy horizons of current and future detectors, i.e., the distance (averaged in sky location and binary inclination) up to which one or more additional modes can be detected and confidently distinguished from each other. We set up all of our searches for additional modes starting at $t=10(M_1+M_2)$ after the peak amplitude in simulated signals of circular nonspinning binaries. An agnostic multimode analysis allows us to rank the subdominant modes: for nearly equal mass binaries we find $(\ell ,m,n)=(2,2,1)$ and $(3,3,0)$ and, for very asymmetric binaries, $(3,3,0)$ and $(4,4,0)$, for the secondary and tertiary modes, respectively. At the current estimated rates for heavy stellar mass binary black hole mergers, with primary masses between 45 and 100 solar masses, we expect an event rate of mergers within our conservative estimate for the $(2,2,1)$ spectroscopy horizon of $0.03-0.10{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ for LIGO at design sensitivity and $(0.6-2.4)\times 10^3{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ for the future third generation ground-based detector Cosmic Explorer.

19 pages, 17 figures, version accepted for publication on PRD

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Cited by in corpus (26)

• Science with the Einstein Telescope: a comparison of different designs
• Analysis of Ringdown Overtones in GW150914
• Agnostic black hole spectroscopy: Quasinormal mode content of numerical relativity waveforms and limits of validity of linear perturbation theory
• Gravitational wave signatures of black hole quasi-normal mode instability
• Stability of the fundamental quasinormal mode in time-domain observations against small perturbations
• Quasinormal modes of slowly-rotating black holes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity
• Extracting linear and nonlinear quasinormal modes from black hole merger simulations
• Black-hole ringdown as a probe of higher-curvature gravity theories
• Energy scales and black hole pseudospectra: the structural role of the scalar product
• Possible Causes of False General Relativity Violations in Gravitational Wave Observations
• Pseudospectrum and binary black hole merger transients
• Thermal Ringdown of a Kerr Black Hole: Overtone Excitation, Fermi-Dirac Statistics and Greybody Factor
• Nonlinear quasinormal mode detectability with next-generation gravitational wave detectors
• Searching for ringdown higher modes with a numerical relativity-informed post-merger model
• Constraining modifications of black hole perturbation potentials near the light ring with quasinormal modes
• Quadratic Quasi-Normal Modes of a Schwarzschild Black Hole
• Parametrized Black Hole Quasinormal Ringdown Formalism for Higher Overtones
• Measuring deviations from the Kerr geometry with black hole ringdown
• Slowly Decaying Ringdown of a Rapidly Spinning Black Hole: Probing the No-Hair Theorem by Small Mass-Ratio Mergers with LISA
• Identifying modified theories of gravity using binary black-hole ringdowns
• Bounds on tidal charges from gravitational-wave ringdown observations
• Black holes and nilmanifolds: quasinormal modes as the fingerprints of extra dimensions?
• Vortices without inflow: bound spectra in horizonless rotational analogs
• Quasinormal modes of anyons
• The landscape of massive black-hole spectroscopy with LISA and Einstein Telescope
• Comparing Bayes factors and hierarchical inference for testing general relativity with gravitational waves