LIGO-O3IMBH

LIGO has discovered surprisingly massive black holes before, notably GW190521. Now, we report the results of analyses focused on these unusually high masses: 100 to 10^5 times the mass of our sun. With these independent and focused reanalyses, we are even more confident that 190521 is real. We also find a few marginal but tanalizing things.

For expertsIn this work, the RIT-developed RIFT parameter inference pipeline was heavily used to characterize the sometimes puzzling features of the most massive black holes. RIT students Anjali Yelikar and Aasim Jan worked hard on this work. The RIT numerical relativity team of C. Lousto and J. Healy provided numerical relativity models for searches to use as synthetic targets, to characterize how far these dedicated searches could find IMBH.

For more information:

• Abbott et al Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo