B. P. Abbott, California Institute of Technology
R. Abbott, California Institute of Technology
R. Adhikari, California Institute of Technology
P. Ajith, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
B. Allen, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
G. Allen, Stanford University
R. S. Amin, Louisiana State University
S. B. Anderson, California Institute of Technology
W. G. Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
M. A. Arain, University of Florida
M. Araya, California Institute of Technology
H. Armandula, California Institute of Technology
P. Armor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Y. Aso, California Institute of Technology
S. Aston, University of Birmingham
P. Aufmuth, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover
C. Aulbert, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
S. Babak, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
P. Baker, Montana State University
S. Ballmer, California Institute of Technology
C. Barker, LIGO Hanford
D. Barker, LIGO Hanford
B. Barr, University of Glasgow
P. Barriga, The University of Western Australia
L. Barsotti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M. A. Barton, California Institute of Technology
I. Bartos, Columbia University
R. Bassiri, University of Glasgow
M. Bastarrika, University of Glasgow
B. Behnke, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
M. Benacquista, University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College
J. Betzwieser, California Institute of Technology
P. T. Beyersdorf, San Jose State University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-9-2009

Abstract

According to general relativity a perturbed black hole will settle to a stationary configuration by the emission of gravitational radiation. Such a perturbation will occur, for example, in the coalescence of a black hole binary, following their inspiral and subsequent merger. At late times the waveform is a superposition of quasinormal modes, which we refer to as the ringdown. The dominant mode is expected to be the fundamental mode, l=m=2. Since this is a well-known waveform, matched filtering can be implemented to search for this signal using LIGO data. We present a search for gravitational waves from black hole ringdowns in the fourth LIGO science run S4, during which LIGO was sensitive to the dominant mode of perturbed black holes with masses in the range of 10M□ to 500M□, the regime of intermediate-mass black holes, to distances up to 300□Mpc. We present a search for gravitational waves from black hole ringdowns using data from S4. No gravitational wave candidates were found; we place a 90%-confidence upper limit on the rate of ringdowns from black holes with mass between 85M□ and 390M□ in the local universe, assuming a uniform distribution of sources, of 3.2×10-5yr-1Mpc-3=1.6×10-3yr- 1L10-1,where L10 is 1010 times the solar blue-light luminosity. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology

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