Detectability of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Multiband Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Understand

The direct measurement of gravitational waves is a powerful tool for surveying the population of black holes across the universe.

• The first gravitational wave catalog from LIGO has detected black holes as heavy as $\sim50~M_\odot$, colliding when our Universe was about half its current age.
• However, there is yet no unambiguous evidence of black holes in the intermediate-mass range of $10^{2-5}~M_\odot$.
• Recent electromagnetic observations have hinted at the existence of IMBHs in the local universe; however, their masses are poorly constrained.