Gravitational wave inference of star cluster properties from intermediate-mass black hole mergers

Kritos, Konstantinos, Reali, Luca, Ng, Ken K. Y., Antonini, Fabio ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3138-6199 and Berti, Emanuele 2025. Gravitational wave inference of star cluster properties from intermediate-mass black hole mergers. Physical Review D 111 (6) , 063056. 10.1103/PhysRevD.111.063056

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Abstract

Next-generation ground-based gravitational wave observatories will observe mergers of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) out to high redshift. Such IMBHs can form through runaway tidal encounters in the cores of dense stellar clusters. In this paper, we ask if the gravitational wave observation of a single merger event between two IMBHs, occurring in the aftermath of the coalescence of the clusters in which they formed, can be used to infer the properties of their host clusters, such as mass, redshift, and half-mass radius. We implement an astrophysically motivated analytic model for cluster evolution and IMBH growth, and we perform IMBH binary parameter estimation using a network of three next-generation detectors. We find that inferring the structural properties of clusters in this way is challenging due to model degeneracy. However, the posteriors on the cluster formation redshifts have relatively narrow peaks, and it may still be possible to infer the cluster formation history by measuring a whole population of IMBH binary merger events.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	American Physical Society
ISSN:	1550-7998
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 March 2025
Date of Acceptance:	28 February 2025
Last Modified:	02 Apr 2025 12:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/177011

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