GW190521 and the GWTC-1 Events: Implication on the Black Hole Mass Function of Coalescing Binary Black Hole Systems

Understand

With the black hole mass function (BHMF; assuming an exponential cutoff at a mass of $\sim 40\,M_\odot$) of coalescing binary black hole systems constructed with the events detected in the O1 run of the advanced LIGO/Virgo network, Liang et al.(2017) predicted that the birth of the lightest intermediate mass black holes (LIMBHs; with a final mass of $\gtrsim 100\,M_\odot$) is very likely to be caught by the advanced LIGO/Virgo detectors in their O3 run.

• The O1 and O2 observation run data, however, strongly favor a cutoff of the BHMF much sharper than the exponential one.
• In this work we show that a power-law function followed by a sudden drop at $\sim 40\,M_\odot$ by a factor of $\sim $a few tens and then a new power-law component extending to $\geq 100M_\odot$ are consistent with the O1 and O2 observation run data.
• With this new BHMF, quite a few LIMBH events can be detected in the O3 observation run of advanced LIGO/Virgo.