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Observing IMBH-IMBH Binary Coalescences via Gravitational Radiation

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Astrophysical Journal Letters

Volume

646

Issue

2

Publication Date

2006

First Page

L135

Last Page

L138

Abstract

Recent numerical simulations have suggested the possibility of forming double intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) via the collisional runaway scenario in young dense star clusters. The two IMBHs that formed would exchange into a common binary shortly after their birth and quickly inspiral and merge. Since space-borne gravitational wave (GW) observatories such as LISAwill be able to see the late phases of their inspiral out to several gigaparsecs, and LIGO will be able to see the merger and ringdown out to similar distances, they represent potentially significant GW sources. In this Letter we estimate the rate at whichLISA and LIGO will see their inspiral and merger in young star clusters, and we discuss the information that can be extracted from the observations. We find that LISA will likely see tens of IMBH-IMBH inspirals per year, while advanced LIGO could see ~10 merger and ringdown events per year, with both rates strongly dependent on the distribution of cluster masses and densities.

Comments

Published by American Astronomical Society in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Publisher's PDF available through remote link. May require subscription if user is not on the USU Network.

https://doi.org/10.1086/507106

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