Echoes from the Abyss: A highly spinning black hole remnant for the binary neutron star merger GW170817

Abstract

The first direct observation of a binary neutron star (BNS) merger was a watershed moment in multi-messenger astronomy. However, gravitational waves from GW170817 have only been observed prior to the BNS merger, but electromagnetic observations all follow the merger event. While post-merger gravitational wave signal in general relativity is too faint (given current detector sensitivities), here we present the first tentative detection of post-merger gravitational wave "echoes" from a highly spinning "black hole" remnant. The echoes may be expected in different models of quantum black holes that replace event horizons by exotic Planck-scale structure and tentative evidence for them has been found in binary black hole merger events. The fact that the echo frequency is suppressed by $\log M$ (in Planck units) puts it squarely in the LIGO sensitivity window, allowing us to build an optimal model-agnostic search strategy via cross-correlating the two detectors in frequency/time. We find a tentative detection of echoes at $f_{\rm echo} \simeq 72$ Hz, around 1.0 sec after the BNS merger, consistent with a 2.6-2.7 $M_\odot$ "black hole" remnant with dimensionless spin $0.84-0.87$. Accounting for all the "look-elsewhere" effects, we find a significance of $4.2 \sigma$, or a false alarm probability of $1.6\times 10^{-5}$, i.e. a similar cross-correlation within the expected frequency/time window after the merger cannot be found more than 4 times in 3 days. If confirmed, this finding will have significant consequences for both physics of quantum black holes and astrophysics of binary neutron star mergers [Note added: This result is independently confirmed by arXiv:1901.04138, who use the electromagnetic observations to infer $t_{\rm coll}=0.98^{+0.31}_{-0.26}$ sec for black hole formation].