Measuring deviations from the Kerr geometry with black hole ringdown

Abstract

Black holes in General Relativity are famously characterized by two "hairs" only, the mass and the spin of the Kerr spacetime. Theories extending General Relativity, however, allow in principle for additional black hole charges, which will generally modify the multipole structure of the Kerr solution. Here, we show that gravitational wave observations of the post-merger ringdown signal from black hole binaries may permit measuring these additional "hairs". We do so by considering spacetime geometries differing from the Kerr one at the level of the quadrupole moment, and computing the differences of their quasinormal mode frequencies from the Kerr ones in the eikonal limit. We then perform a Bayesian analysis with current and future gravitational wave data and compute posterior constraints for the quadrupole deviation away from Kerr. We find that the inclusion of higher modes, which are potentially observable by future detectors, will allow for constraining deviations from the Kerr quadrupole at percent level.

arXiv comment15 pages, 6 figures, matches version published in PRD

References in corpus (68)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2
• GW170814: A Three-Detector Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• GW190425: Observation of a Compact Binary Coalescence with Total Mass $\sim 3.4M_{\odot }$
• Testing General Relativity with Present and Future Astrophysical Observations
• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• GW170608: Observation of a 19-solar-mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• Sensitivity Studies for Third-Generation Gravitational Wave Observatories
• Properties of the Binary Black Hole Merger GW150914
• Geodesic stability, Lyapunov exponents and quasinormal modes
• On gravitational-wave spectroscopy of massive black holes with the space interferometer LISA
• Tests of General Relativity with the Binary Black Hole Signals from the LIGO-Virgo Catalog GWTC-1
• Tests of General Relativity with Binary Black Holes from the second LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog
• Science with the space-based interferometer LISA. V: Extreme mass-ratio inspirals
• GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses
• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. VI: Testing the Black Hole Metric
• Can environmental effects spoil precision gravitational-wave astrophysics?
• Black Hole Spectroscopy: Testing General Relativity through Gravitational Wave Observations
• Testing the no-hair theorem with GW150914
• A Metric for Rapidly Spinning Black Holes Suitable for Strong-Field Tests of the No-Hair Theorem
• Constraints on black-hole charges with the 2017 EHT observations of M87*
• Eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of spin-weighted spheroidal harmonics in four and higher dimensions
• General parametrization of axisymmetric black holes in metric theories of gravity
• Spectroscopy of Kerr black holes with Earth- and space-based interferometers
• New parametrization for spherically symmetric black holes in metric theories of gravity
• Quasinormal-mode spectrum of Kerr black holes and its geometric interpretation
• Theory-Agnostic Constraints on Black-Hole Dipole Radiation with Multi-Band Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics
• Constraining the quadrupole moment of stellar-mass black-hole candidates with the continuum fitting method
• Nonlinearities in Black Hole Ringdowns
• Nonlinear effects in black hole ringdown
• Observable Properties of Orbits in Exact Bumpy Spacetimes
• Parametrized black hole quasinormal ringdown. I. Decoupled equations for nonrotating black holes
• Analysis of Ringdown Overtones in GW150914
• Testing general relativity using golden black-hole binaries
• Testing the no-hair theorem with black hole ringdowns using TIGER
• Quasinormal modes of nearly extremal Kerr spacetimes: spectrum bifurcation and power-law ringdown
• Quasinormal modes of Kerr-Newman black holes: coupling of electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations
• Parametrized black hole quasinormal ringdown. II. Coupled equations and quadratic corrections for nonrotating black holes
• Probing the space-time geometry around black hole candidates with the resonance models for high-frequency QPOs and comparison with the continuum-fitting method
• Perturbed Kerr Black Holes can probe deviations from General Relativity
• The Quasinormal Mode Spectrum of a Kerr Black Hole in the Eikonal Limit
• Constraints on the spacetime geometry around 10 stellar-mass black hole candidates from the disk's thermal spectrum
• Branching of quasinormal modes for nearly extremal Kerr black holes
• Testing the no-hair theorem with the continuum-fitting and the iron line methods: a short review
• Nonlinear effects in the black hole ringdown: absorption-induced mode excitation
• Searching for a Ringdown Overtone in GW150914
• Parametrized ringdown spin expansion coefficients: a data-analysis framework for black-hole spectroscopy with multiple events
• Post-Kerr black hole spectroscopy
• Black Hole Ringing, Quasinormal Modes, and Light Rings
• The next decade of black hole spectroscopy
• Approximate Matching of Analytic and Numerical Solutions for Rapidly Rotating Neutron Stars
• Eikonal quasinormal modes of black holes beyond General Relativity
• The final stages of accretion onto non-Kerr compact objects
• Gravitational-wave versus X-ray tests of strong-field gravity
• Testing the Kerr metric with the iron line and the KRZ parametrization
• Quasinormal Modes of a Black Hole with Quadrupole Moment
• Reflected Iron Line From a Source Above a Kerr Black Hole Accretion Disc
• Bayesian Metric Reconstruction with Gravitational Wave Observations
• Can we constrain the maximum value for the spin parameter of the super-massive objects in galactic nuclei without knowing their actual nature?
• Black hole spectroscopy horizons for current and future gravitational wave detectors
• Probing beyond-Kerr spacetimes with inspiral-ringdown corrections to gravitational waves
• Theory-agnostic Reconstruction of Potential and Couplings from Quasi-Normal Modes
• Constraining modifications of black hole perturbation potentials near the light ring with quasinormal modes
• Quasinormal modes, quasibound states, scalar clouds, and superradiant instabilities of a Kerr-like black hole
• A parametrized quasi-normal mode framework for non-Schwarzschild metrics
• Quasinormal Modes of Generalized Black Holes: delta-Kerr Spacetime

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Effect of Noise Estimation in Time-Domain Ringdown Analysis: A Case Study with GW150914
• Bounds on tidal charges from gravitational-wave ringdown observations
• Confronting eikonal and post-Kerr methods with numerical evolution of scalar field perturbations in spacetimes beyond Kerr
• Fast and accurate analytical formulas for light propagation in general static, spherically symmetric spacetimes