RT Journal Article
T1 Confusing Head-On Collisions with Precessing Intermediate-Mass Binary Black Hole Mergers
A1 Calderón Bustillo, Juan
A1 Sanchis-Gual, Nicolas
A1 Torres-Forné, Alejandro
A1 Font, José A.
K1 gravitational waves
K1 numerical relativity
AB We report a degeneracy between the gravitational-wave signals from quasicircular precessing black-hole mergers and those from extremely eccentric mergers, namely, head-on collisions. Performing model selection on numerically simulated signals of head-on collisions using models for quasicircular binaries, we find that, for signal-to-noise ratios of 15 and 25, typical of Advanced LIGO observations, head-on mergers with respective total masses of 𝑀 ∈(125,300)⁢𝑀⊙ and 𝑀 ∈(200,440)⁢𝑀⊙ would be identified as precessing quasicircular intermediate-mass black-hole binaries located at a much larger distance. Ruling out the head-on scenario would require us to perform model selection using currently nonexistent waveform models for head-on collisions, together with the application of astrophysically motivated priors on the (rare) occurrence of those events. We show that in situations where standard parameter inference of compact binaries may report component masses inside (outside) the pair-instability supernova gap, the true object may be a head-on merger with masses outside (inside) this gap. We briefly discuss the potential implications of these findings for GW190521, which we analyze in detail in J.
PB APS
SN 0031-9007
YR 2021
FD 2021-05-17
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/45848
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/45848
LA eng
NO Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 201101. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.201101.
DS Minerva
RD 25 may 2026