Black Hole Mergers of AGN Origin in LIGO–Virgo’s O1–O3a Observing Periods
Black Hole Mergers of AGN Origin in LIGO–Virgo’s O1–O3a Observing Periods
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DOI：
10.3847/2041-8213/ac2cc1
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发表时间：
2021-04
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
V. Gayathri;Y. Yang;H. Tagawa;Z. Haiman;I. Bartos
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文献类型：
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作者：
V. Gayathri;Y. Yang;H. Tagawa;Z. Haiman;I. Bartos
LIGO-Virgo探测到的黑洞合并的起源仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。虽然少数事件的不寻常质量和自旋限制了它们可能的天体物理形成机制，但很难对观察到的大部分合并进行分类。在这里，我们考虑的质量和自旋分布在LIGO-Virgo的前两个观测目录。我们表明，对于质量间隙中的黑洞，我们的基准活动星系核（AGN）模型优于参数质量自旋模型拟合完整的GWTC-2合并样本（贝叶斯因子ε>10）。然而，这种偏好取决于不确定的活动星系核模型参数。我们进一步表明，一个活动星系核盘起源的检测到的事件的20%的分数的贡献再现以及观察到的黑洞质量分布在对不稳定的质量间隙，而只有轻微的贡献较低的质量检测到的人口。活动星系核的贡献相当于黑洞的合并速率约为2.5 Gpc−3 yr−1，与理论预期相当。
The origin of the black hole mergers detected by LIGO–Virgo remains an open question. While the unusual mass and spin of a few events constrain their possible astrophysical formation mechanisms, it is difficult to classify the bulk of the observed mergers. Here we consider the distribution of masses and spins in LIGO–Virgo’s first two observing catalogs. We show that, for black holes in the mass gap, our fiducial active galactic nucleus (AGN) model is preferred over a parametric mass–spin model fit to the full GWTC-2 merger sample (Bayes factor >10 ). This preference, nevertheless, depends on uncertain AGN model parameters. We further show that a 20% fractional contribution of the detected events of an AGN-disk origin reproduces well the observed black hole mass distribution in the pair-instability mass gap, while only marginally contributing to the lower-mass detected population. The overall AGN contribution corresponds to a black hole merger rate of about 2.5 Gpc−3 yr−1, comparable to theoretical expectations.