A complete measurement of a black-hole recoil through higher-order gravitational-wave modes

Abstract

General relativity predicts that gravitational waves (GWs) carry linear momentum. Consequently, the remnant black hole of a black-hole merger can inherit a recoil velocity or ``kick'' of crucial implications in, e.g., black-hole formation scenarios. While the kick magnitude is determined by the mass ratio and spins of the source, estimating its direction requires a measurement of the \textit{two orientation angles} of the source. While the orbital inclination angle is commonly reported in GW observations, the scientific potential of the azimuthal one has not been exploited to date. We show how the presence of more than one GW emission mode allows one to constrain this angle and, consequently, the kick direction of a real GW event. We analyse the GW190412 signal, which contains higher-order modes, with a numerical-relativity surrogate waveform model for black-hole mergers. We rule out kick magnitudes below the typical escape velocity of dense globular clusters $v_{\text{esc}}\approx 50$\,km/s with a Bayes Factor of $\simeq 21$ (or $\simeq 95\%$ probability). The kick forms angles ${\theta }_{KL}^{-100M}=32_{-14}^{+35}°$ with the orbital angular momentum defined at a reference time $t_{\mathrm{ref}}=-100M$ before merger (with $M$ denoting the system mass in geometric units), ${\theta }_{KN}=44_{-17}^{+19}°$ with the line-of-sight. The projections of the kick and line-of-sight onto the orbital plane form an angle ${\varphi }_{KN}^{-100M}=69_{-38}^{+33}°$. All quantities are quoted at a $90\%$ credible level. Finally, by analyzing numerically simulated signals, we show that recoils can be estimated in an unbiased way using the NRSur7dq4 waveform model. We briefly discuss the potential application of this type of measurement for multi-messenger observations of black-hole mergers occurring in Active Galactic Nuclei.

arXiv comment17 pages, 8 figures, 2 Tables. Version accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy

References in corpus (89)

• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Advanced LIGO
• dynesty: A Dynamic Nested Sampling Package for Estimating Bayesian Posteriors and Evidences
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• Young massive star clusters
• Bilby: A user-friendly Bayesian inference library for gravitational-wave astronomy
• Properties of the Binary Black Hole Merger GW150914
• The Assembly and Merging History of Supermassive Black Holes in Hierarchical Models of Galaxy Formation
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives
• Formation of Supermassive Black Holes
• A simple model of complete precessing black-hole-binary gravitational waveforms
• GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Computationally efficient models for the dominant and sub-dominant harmonic modes of precessing binary black holes
• Maximum gravitational recoil
• Total recoil: the maximum kick from nonspinning black-hole binary inspiral
• Surrogate models for precessing binary black hole simulations with unequal masses
• Candidate Electromagnetic Counterpart to the Binary Black Hole Merger Gravitational Wave Event S190521g
• Merging black hole binaries in galactic nuclei: implications for advanced-LIGO detections
• Consequences of gravitational radiation recoil
• Supermassive recoil velocities for binary black-hole mergers with antialigned spins
• Inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms of spinning, precessing black-hole binaries in the effective-one-body formalism
• New binary black hole mergers in the second observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO
• Multipolar Effective-One-Body Waveforms for Precessing Binary Black Holes: Construction and Validation
• Surrogate model of hybridized numerical relativity binary black hole waveforms
• Detecting gravitational waves from precessing binaries of spinning compact objects: Adiabatic limit
• Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
• Recoil Velocities from Equal-Mass Binary-Black-Hole Mergers
• 2-OGC: Open Gravitational-wave Catalog of binary mergers from analysis of public Advanced LIGO and Virgo data
• 4-OGC: Catalog of gravitational waves from compact-binary mergers
• Validating the effective-one-body model of spinning, precessing binary black holes against numerical relativity
• Towards models of gravitational waveforms from generic binaries: A simple approximate mapping between precessing and non-precessing inspiral signals
• Massively parallel Bayesian inference for transient gravitational-wave astronomy
• Hangup Kicks: Still Larger Recoils by Partial Spin/Orbit Alignment of Black-Hole Binaries
• 1-OGC: The first open gravitational-wave catalog of binary mergers from analysis of public Advanced LIGO data
• Exploring black hole superkicks
• Gravitational recoil from spinning binary black hole mergers
• 3-OGC: Catalog of gravitational waves from compact-binary mergers
• Gravitational Recoil From Accretion-Aligned Black-Hole Binaries
• Including higher order multipoles in gravitational-wave models for precessing binary black holes
• New binary black hole mergers in the LIGO--Virgo O3a data
• Addressing the spin question in gravitational-wave searches: Waveform templates for inspiralling compact binaries with nonprecessing spins
• Ram-pressure stripping of a kicked Hill sphere: Prompt electromagnetic emission from the merger of stellar mass black holes in an AGN accretion disk
• Hierarchical black hole mergers in young, globular and nuclear star clusters: the effect of metallicity, spin and cluster properties
• Remnant mass, spin, and recoil from spin aligned black-hole binaries
• Next-to-next-to-leading order spin-orbit effects in the near-zone metric and precession equations of compact binaries
• Searching for Gravitational Waves from Compact Binaries with Precessing Spins
• High-accuracy mass, spin, and recoil predictions of generic black-hole merger remnants
• Gravitational Wave Recoil and the Retention of Intermediate Mass Black Holes
• General-relativistic precession in a black-hole binary
• Formation of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes through Runaway Collisions in the First Star Clusters
• Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes: Effect of non-quadrupole modes
• PESummary: the code agnostic Parameter Estimation Summary page builder
• Impact of Higher Harmonics in Searching for Gravitational Waves from Non-Spinning Binary Black Holes
• A light in the dark: searching for electromagnetic counterparts to black hole-black hole mergers in LIGO/Virgo O3 with the Zwicky Transient Facility
• Superkicks in Hyperbolic Encounters of Binary Black Holes
• The curious case of GW200129: interplay between spin-precession inference and data-quality issues
• Searching for the full symphony of black hole binary mergers
• Detectability of gravitational waves from binary black holes: Impact of precession and higher modes
• Nonlinear Gravitational Recoil from the Mergers of Precessing Black-Hole Binaries
• Binary black hole merger gravitational waves and recoil in the large mass ratio limit
• Effect of calibration errors on Bayesian parameter estimation for gravitational wave signals from inspiral binary systems in the advanced detectors era
• Extracting the Gravitational Recoil from Black Hole Merger Signals
• Black hole kicks as new gravitational wave observables
• Tracking black hole kicks from gravitational wave observations
• Remnant Black Hole Kicks and Implications for Hierarchical Mergers
• Precession during merger 1: Strong polarization changes are observationally accessible features of strong-field gravity during binary black hole merger
• Gravitational-wave astronomy with a physical calibration model
• Astrophysical implications of GW190412 as a remnant of a previous black-hole merger
• Sensitivity of gravitational wave searches to the full signal of intermediate mass black hole binaries during the LIGO O1 Science Run
• Measuring the spins of heavy binary black holes
• Measuring binary black hole orbital-plane spin orientations
• A more effective coordinate system for parameter estimation of precessing compact binaries from gravitational waves
• NuRIA: Numerical Relativity Injection Analysis of spinning binary black hole signals in Advanced LIGO data
• First measurement of the Hubble parameter from bright binary black hole GW190521
• Revisiting the evidence for precession in GW200129 with machine learning noise mitigation
• First gravitational-wave search for intermediate-mass black hole mergers with higher order harmonics
• Numerical Relativity Injection Infrastructure
• Unveiling the spectrum of inspiralling binary black holes
• Improved analysis of GW190412 with a precessing numerical relativity surrogate waveform model
• Amplification of superkicks in black-hole binaries through orbital eccentricity
• Anomalies in the gravitational recoil of eccentric black-hole mergers with unequal mass ratios
• Post-merger chirps from binary black holes as probes of the final black-hole horizon
• Analysis of GWTC-3 with fully precessing numerical relativity surrogate models
• Inconsistent black hole kick estimates from gravitational-wave models
• Impact of calibration uncertainties on Hubble constant measurements from gravitational-wave sources
• Evidence of large recoil velocity from a black hole merger signal

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Adding equatorial-asymmetric effects for spin-precessing binaries into the SEOBNRv5PHM waveform model
• Gravitational-wave signatures of mirror (a)symmetry in binary black hole mergers: measurability and correlation to gravitational-wave recoil
• Uncovering subdominant multipole asymmetries in binary black-hole mergers