Constraining the Konoplya-Rezzolla-Zhidenko deformation parameters III: limits from stellar-mass black holes using gravitational-wave observations

Understand

Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes provide a suitable arena to test the fundamental nature of gravity in the strong-field regime.

• Using the data of the inspiral of 29 events detected by the LIGO-Virgo observatories, we perform a theory-agnostic test of the Kerr hypothesis.
• We compute the leading-order deviation to the gravitational waves emitted in the frequency domain and provide constraints on two deformation parameters ($\delta_1$ and $\delta_2$) belonging to a general class of axisymmetric non-Kerr black hole spacetimes proposed by Konoplya, Rezzolla & Zhidenko.
• Our study shows that all the analyzed events are consistent with the Kerr hypothesis.