Searching for Echoes of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of Exotic Compact Objects: A Bayesian Approach

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Abstract:: The ringdown part of the gravitational wave from the merger of two black holes was suggested as a probe of the internal structure of the remnant compact object, which may be more exotic than a black hole. Cardoso et al. pointed out that there would be a train of echoes in the late-time ringdown phase for different types of exotic compact objects (ECOs). Abedi et al. claimed that they have found evidence of echoes in binary black hole mergers detected by LIGO. In this project, we aim to search for echoes of gravitational waves in the three detections LIGO had, and verify their results using their phenomenological model with Bayesian analysis instead. We perform a Bayesian parameter estimation on the parameters related to echoes and Bayesian model selection of presence of echoes versus their absence, to provide stronger evidence for the presence or absence of echoes in these detections. The analysis technique developed in this project could be repeated with different models to provide even more robust evidence of the existence of echoes from ECOs.

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LIGO Document T1700322-v1