GW170814 : A Three-Detector Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Coalescence

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Abstract:: On August 14, 2017 at 10:30:43 UTC, the Advanced Virgo detector and the two Advanced LIGO detectors coherently observed a transient gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes, with a false-alarm-rate of ≲ 1 in 27 000 years. The signal was observed with a three-detector network matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 18. The inferred masses of the initial black holes are 30.5+5.7
−3.0 M_☉ and 25.3+2.8
−4.2 M_☉ (at the 90% credible level). The luminosity distance of the source is 540+130
−210 M_pc, corresponding to a redshift of z = 0.11+0.03
−0.04. A network of three detectors improves the sky localization of the source, reducing the area of the 90% credible region from 1160 deg² using only the two LIGO detectors to 60 deg² using all three detectors. For the first time, we can test the nature of gravitational wave polarizations from the antenna response of the LIGO-Virgo network, thus enabling a new class of phenomenological tests of gravity.

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LIGO Document P170814-v15