Constraining the Black Hole Initial Mass Function with LIGO/VIRGO Observations


Abstract in English

Prior to the detection of black holes (BHs) via the gravitational waves (GWs) they generate at merger, the presence of BHs was inferred in X-ray binaries, mostly via dynamical measurements, with masses in the range between $sim 5-20~M_odot$. The LIGO discovery of the first BHs via GWs was surprising in that the two BHs that merged had masses of $35.6^{+4.8}_{-3.0}$ and $30.6^{+3.0}_{-4.4},M_odot$, which are both above the range inferred from X-ray binaries. With 20 BH detections from the O1/O2 runs, the distribution of masses remains generally higher than the X-ray inferred one, while the effective spins are generally lower, suggesting that, at least in part, the GW-detected population might be of dynamical origin rather than produced by the common evolution of field binaries. Here we perform high-resolution N-body simulations of a cluster of isolated BHs with a range of initial mass spectra and upper mass cut-offs, and study the resulting binary mass spectrum resulting from the dynamical interactions. Our clusters have properties similar to those of the massive remnants in an OB association $sim 10 , mathrm{Myr}$ after formation. We perform a likelihood analysis for each of our dynamically-formed binary population against the data from the O1 and O2 LIGO/Virgo runs. We find that an initial mass spectrum $M_{rm BH}propto M^{-2.35}$ with an upper mass cutoff $M_{rm max}sim 50M_odot$ is favored by the data, together with a slight preference for a merger rate that increases with redshift.

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