Schedule Aug 03, 2012
Detection and Localization of IMBH Binary Sources
Sergey Klimenko (Univ. Florida)

Intermediate mass black holes (IMBH) is a missing link between stellar and supermassive black holes covering a mass spectrum between tens to thousands solar masses. Detection of gravitational waves (GW) from merging IMBH binary systems would have important consequences for theories about the formation of super-massive black holes, and dynamics and evolution of globular clusters. The first search for gravitational waves from IMBH sources conducted with the LIGO and Virgo detectors found no GW signal so far and established experimental limits on the rate of IMBH mergers. Due to a large total mass only the final stages of the binary coalescence enter the low frequency sensitivity band of the ground-based detectors making hard a robust identification of IMBH sources and accurate estimation of their parameters, particularly sky localization. In the talk I discuss challenges of the IMBH detection and sky localization, along with the prospects of experimental study of IMBH sources with advanced GW detectors.

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