paper

Analysis of the subsolar-mass black hole candidate SSM200308 from the second part of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO-Virgo

arXiv:2311.16085 · doi:10.1016/j.dark.2024.101582

Abstract

A follow-up of a subsolar black hole candidate identified in the second part of the third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration is carried out. With a search signal-to-noise ratio of $8.90$ and a false-alarm rate of 1 per 5 years, close to the usual thresholds for claiming a gravitational-wave event, we cannot exclude a noise origin. A complete Bayesian parameter estimation of this candidate, denoted SSM200308, reveals that if the signal originates from a compact binary coalescence, the component masses are $m_{1} = 0.6 2_{- 0.20}^{+ 0.46} M_{⊙}$ and $m_{2} = 0.2 7_{- 0.10}^{+ 0.12} M_{⊙}$ (90% credible intervals) with at least one component being firmly subsolar, below the minimum mass of a neutron star. This discards the hypothesis that the signal comes from a standard binary neutron star. The signal coherence test between the two LIGO detectors brings support to a compact object coalescence origin.

7 pages, 4 figures, comments welcome