What was the Initial Mass of Merging Black Holes in GW150914 ?

Abstract

Recently, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has detected the gravitational wave (GW) event, GW150914, as a result of the merger of a ~30 M_⊙ black hole (BH) binary. So far, the merger of stellar-mass BHs has been thought to result from the evolution of binary stars. Here, we propose a novel path of the merger stemming from non-binary isolated stars. In our previous studies, we have found that multiple non-binary stellar-mass BHs whose separations are larger than 1000 AU can merge with each other under the gas-rich environments through the gas dynamical friction and three-body interaction. In this case, a considerable amount of gas can accrete onto BHs before the merger, that is, the initial mass of BHs can be lower than 30 M_⊙. To explore this possibility, we perform post-Newtonian N-body simulations on mergers of accreting stellar-mass BHs. Based on our simulations, we find that the BH merger in GW150914 from smaller seed BHs is likely to occur in galactic nuclear regions or dense interstellar cloud cores. Furthermore, we roughly estimate event rates to be ~0.4 yr⁻¹ in galactic nuclear regions and ~8 yr⁻¹ in dense interstellar cloud cores.