Black hole mergers detectable with LIGO can occur in active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks. Here we parameterize the merger rates, the mass spectrum and the spin spectrum of black holes (BH) in AGN disks. The predicted merger rate spans ∼10−4−104Gpc−1yr−1, so upper limits from LIGO (<212Gpc−1yr−1) already constrain it. The predicted mass spectrum has the form of a broken power-law consisting of a pre-existing BH powerlaw mass spectrum and a harder powerlaw mass spectrum resulting from mergers. The predicted spin spectrum is multi-peaked with the evolution of retrograde spin BH in the gas disk playing a key role. We outline the large uncertainties in each of these LIGO observables for this channel and we discuss ways in which they can be constrained in the future.
@article{arxiv.1702.07818,
title = {On stellar-mass black hole mergers in AGN disks detectable with LIGO},
author = {B. McKernan and K. E. S. Ford and J. Bellovary and N. W. C. Leigh and Z. Haiman and B. Kocsis and W. Lyra and M. -M. MacLow and B. Metzger and M. O'Dowd and S. Endlich and D. J. Rosen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.07818},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
9pages, 2 figures, revised version submitted to ApJ. Comments welcome