Dynamical Interactions and the Black Hole Merger Rate of the Universe

Abstract

Binary black holes can form efficiently in dense young stellar clusters, such as the progenitors of globular clusters, via a combination of gravitational segregation and cluster evaporation. We use simple analytic arguments supported by detailed N-body simulations to determine how frequently black holes born in a single stellar cluster should form binaries, be ejected from the cluster, and merge through the emission of gravitational radiation. We then convolve this ``transfer function'' relating cluster formation to black hole mergers with (i) the distribution of observed cluster masses and (ii) the star formation history of the universe, assuming that a significant fraction gcl of star formation occurs in clusters and that a significant fraction gcand of clusters undergo this segregation and evaporation process. We predict future ground--based gravitational wave (GW) detectors could observe ~500 (gcl/0.5) (gcand/0.1) double black hole mergers per year, and the presently operating LIGO interferometer would have a chance (50%) at detecting a merger during its first full year of science data. More realistically, advanced LIGO and similar next-generation gravitational wave observatories provide unique opportunities to constrain otherwise inaccessible properties of clusters formed in the early universe.

4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in PRD Rapid Communications

References in corpus (8)

• Total recoil: the maximum kick from nonspinning black-hole binary inspiral
• Evidence for the Strong Effect of Gas Removal on the Internal Dynamics of Young Stellar Clusters
• The History of Cosmological Star Formation: Three Independent Approaches and a Critical Test Using the Extragalactic Background Light
• On the Similarity between Cluster and Galactic Stellar Initial Mass Functions
• A comprehensive Nbody study of mass segregation in star clusters: Energy equipartition and escape
• Observing IMBH-IMBH Binary Coalescences via Gravitational Radiation
• Star Cluster Ecology: VII The evolution of young dense star clusters containing primordial binaries
• Cluster Disruption: Combining Theory and Observations

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Gravitational waves from scattering of stellar-mass black holes in galactic nuclei
• Host Galaxies Catalog Used in LIGO Searches for Compact Binary Coalescence Events
• AGN Disks Harden the Mass Distribution of Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers
• Accurate and efficient waveforms for compact binaries on eccentric orbits
• The Total Merger Rate of Compact Object Binaries In The Local Universe
• Modeling kicks from the merger of non-precessing black-hole binaries
• Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the Cluster Monte Carlo Code
• The impact of common envelope development criteria on the formation of LIGO/Virgo sources
• Binary black hole merger gravitational waves and recoil in the large mass ratio limit
• The implications of high BH spins on the origin of BH-BH mergers
• Intrinsic selection biases of ground-based gravitational wave searches for high-mass BH-BH mergers
• Gravitational-wave event rates as a new probe for dark matter microphysics
• Characterizing the effect of eccentricity on the dynamics of binary black hole mergers in numerical relativity
• A complete waveform comparison of post-Newtonian and numerical relativity in eccentric orbits
• Gravitational wave background from primordial black holes in globular clusters