LIGO-GW170608

Back in June 2017, another binary black hole was detected: GW170608.

For more information GW170608: Observation of a 19-solar-mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence, submitted to ApJL

Comparing GW170608 to numerical relativity: This merger is similar to GW1511226: a fairly low mass merger, spiralling slowly through the emission of gravitational radiation and thus producing a long signal in the LIGO instruments. While NR simulations aren’t long enough to capture the full inspiral, we can hybridize these simulations with analytic models, and compare the hybrids with our data. This paper is the first time LIGO data was compared with these hybrids. The following graphic compares the reconstructed GW signal from model-based PE (blue) with NR reconstructions generated using several best-fitting simulations. To highlight the brevity of these simulations, we have not hybridized them in this graphic. [Image credit: LSC/Sudarshan Ghonge]