The mass of a Kerr black hole (BH) can be separated into irreducible and rotational components—the former is a lower limit to the energy that cannot be possibly extracted from the event horizon and is related to its area. Here we compute the irreducible masses of the stellar-mass BHs observed by gravitational-wave interferometers LIGO and Virgo. Using single-event data, we present a re-parameterization of the posterior distribution that explicitly highlights the irreducible and rotational contributions to the total energy. We exploit the area law to rank the black-hole mergers observed to date according to their irreversibility, thus providing a guide to selecting events for targeted tests of general relativity. Using population fits, we compute the rate by which the total area of black-hole horizons increases due to the observable mergers.
Gerosa, D., Fabbri, C., Sperhake, U. (2022). The irreducible mass and the horizon area of LIGO’s black holes. CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM GRAVITY, 39(17 (1 September 2022)) [10.1088/1361-6382/ac8332].
The irreducible mass and the horizon area of LIGO’s black holes
Gerosa D.
;
2022
Abstract
The mass of a Kerr black hole (BH) can be separated into irreducible and rotational components—the former is a lower limit to the energy that cannot be possibly extracted from the event horizon and is related to its area. Here we compute the irreducible masses of the stellar-mass BHs observed by gravitational-wave interferometers LIGO and Virgo. Using single-event data, we present a re-parameterization of the posterior distribution that explicitly highlights the irreducible and rotational contributions to the total energy. We exploit the area law to rank the black-hole mergers observed to date according to their irreversibility, thus providing a guide to selecting events for targeted tests of general relativity. Using population fits, we compute the rate by which the total area of black-hole horizons increases due to the observable mergers.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.