Using Black Hole Mergers to Explore Structure Formation

Details Using Black Hole Mergers to Explore Structure Formation Using Black Hole Mergers to Explore Structure Formation

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21348101a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #481.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.447

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Observations of gravitational waves from massive black hole mergers will open a new window into the era of structure formation in the early universe. Past efforts have concentrated on calculating merger rates using different physical assumptions, resulting in merger rate estimates that span a wide range (0.1 - 104 mergers/year). We develop a semi-analytical, phenomenological model of massive black hole mergers that includes plausible combinations of several physical parameters, which we then turn around to determine how well observations with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be able to enhance our understanding of the universe during the critical z ˜ 5 - 30 epoch. Our approach involves generating synthetic LISA observable data (total BH masses, BH mass ratios, redshifts, merger rates), which are then analyzed using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, thus finding constraints for the physical parameters of the mergers. We find that our method works well at estimating merger parameters and that the number of merger events is a key discriminant among models, therefore making our method robust against observational uncertainties. Our approach can also be extended to more physically-driven models and more general problems in cosmology. This work is supported in part by the Cooperative Education Program at NASA/GSFC.

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