GW230529_181500: A Potential Primordial Binary Black Hole Merger in the Mass Gap

Abstract

During the fourth observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detector network, the LIGO Livingston observatory detected a coalescing compact binary, GW230529_181500, with component masses of $2.5-4.5M_{\odot }$ and $1.2-2.0M_{\odot }$ at the $90\%$ credible level. The gravitational-wave data alone is insufficient to determine whether the components are neutron stars or black holes. In this paper, we propose that GW230529_181500 originated from the merger of two primordial black holes (PBHs). We estimate a merger rate of $5.0_{-4.9}^{+47.0}{\mathrm{Gpc}}^{-3}{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ for compact binary coalescences with properties similar to GW230529_181500. Assuming the source is a PBH-PBH merger, GW230529-like events lead to approximately $1.7_{-1.5}^{+36.2}\times 10^{-3}$ of the dark matter in the form of PBHs. The required abundance of PBHs to explain this event is consistent with existing upper limits derived from microlensing, cosmic microwave background observations and the null detection of gravitational wave background by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA.

15 pages, 3 figures; Accepted by JCAP

References in corpus (23)

• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• Limits on the Macho Content of the Galactic Halo from the EROS-2 Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
• Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Recent Developments
• Cosmic microwave background limits on accreting primordial black holes
• The merger rate of primordial-black-hole binaries
• CMB bounds on disk-accreting massive Primordial Black Holes
• Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a $2.5\text{-}4.5M_{\odot }$ Compact Object and a Neutron Star
• Primordial seeds of supermassive black holes
• Cosmology in the dark: On the importance of source population models for gravitational-wave cosmology
• Questions on calculation of primordial power spectrum with large spikes: the resonance model case
• A pulsar in a binary with a compact object in the mass gap between neutron stars and black holes
• No massive black holes in the Milky Way halo
• Primordial Black Holes from Multifield Inflation with Nonminimal Couplings
• Primordial black holes and stochastic gravitational wave background from inflation with a noncanonical spectator field
• Constraint on the abundance of primordial black holes in dark matter from Planck data
• Does Matter Matter? Using the mass distribution to distinguish neutron stars and black holes
• Microlensing optical depth and event rate toward the Large Magellanic Cloud based on 20 years of OGLE observations
• Constraining the Merger History of Primordial-Black-Hole Binaries from GWTC-3
• Testing primordial black hole and measuring the Hubble constant with multiband gravitational-wave observations
• Enhanced Curvature Perturbation and Primordial Black Hole Formation in Two-stage Inflation with a break
• Merger rate of charged black holes from the two-body dynamical capture
• Establishing the Non-Primordial Origin of Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers
• Redshift evolution of primordial black hole merger rate

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Primordial black holes and induced gravitational waves from logarithmic non-Gaussianity
• Probe and Prejudice: Classification of compact objects and model comparison using EOS knowledge
• What is the nature of GW230529? An exploration of the gravitational lensing hypothesis
• Hawking Radiation Signatures from Primordial Black Holes Transiting the Inner Solar System: Prospects for Detection
• The Nature of Gravitational Wave Events with Host Environment Escape Velocities
• Mass function of stellar black holes as revealed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observations
• Primordial Black Hole Mergers as Probes of Dark Matter in Galactic Center
• Detection prospects for the GW background of Galactic (sub)solar mass primordial black holes
• Characterizing Compact-object Binaries in the Lower Mass Gap with Gravitational Waves