Paper detail

What can we really infer from GW 150914?

We analyze the event GW 150914 announced by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) as the gravitational-wave emission of a black-hole binary merger. We show that the parameters of the coalescing system and of the newly formed Kerr black-hole can be extracted from basic results of the gravitational-wave emission during the inspiraling and merger phases without sophisticated numerical simulations. Our strikingly accurate estimates are based on textbook formulas describing two different regimes: 1) the binary inspiraling analysis treated in Landau and Lifshitz textbook, and 2) the plunge of a particle into a black-hole, treated in the Rees-Ruffini-Wheeler textbook. It is stressed that in order to infer any astrophysical information on the masses of the system both regimes have to be independently and observationally constrained by LIGO, which does not appear to be the case.