Find the Gap: Black Hole Population Analysis with an Astrophysically Motivated Mass Function
| Autor: | Jeremy Sakstein, Eric J. Baxter, Samuel D. McDermott, Djuna Croon |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Population FOS: Physical sciences Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) Stellar structure education Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) Physics education.field_of_study Star formation Astronomy and Astrophysics Function (mathematics) Black hole High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Space and Planetary Science Pair-instability supernova Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Event (particle physics) Mass gap Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| Zdroj: | The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2021, Vol.916(2), pp.L16 [Peer Reviewed Journal] |
| Popis: | We introduce a novel black hole mass function which realistically models the physics of star formation and pair instability supernova with a minimal number of parameters. Applying this to all events in the LIGO-Virgo GWTC-2 catalog, we detect a peak at M_BHMG = 74.8^{+4.3}_{-8.0} MS, followed by a break in the mass function. Repeating the analysis without the black holes from the event GW190521, we find this feature at M_BHMG = 55.4^{+3.0}_{-6.1} MS. The latter result establishes the edge of the anticipated "black hole mass gap" at a value compatible with the expectation from standard stellar structure theory, while the former result is ~ 20MS higher, which would have far-reaching implications if confirmed. Using Bayesian techniques, we establish that our mass function fits a new catalog of black hole masses approximately as well as the pre-existing phenomenological mass functions. We also remark on the implications of these results for constraining or discovering new phenomena in nuclear and particle physics. 6+7 pages; v2: updated analysis with increased evidence and changes to parameter values when applying our model to full dataset, matches version accepted in ApJL |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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