Observing an intermediate-mass black hole GW190521 with minimal assumptions

On May 21, 2019 the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors observed a gravitational-wave transient GW190521, the heaviest binary black-hole merger detected to date with remnant mass of 142 M. that was published recently. This observation is the first strong evidence for the existence of intermediate-mass black holes. The significance of this observation was determined by the coherent WAVEBURST (cWB) search algorithm, which identified GW190521 with minimal assumptions of its source model. In this paper, we show the performance of cWB for the detection of the binary black-hole mergers without use of the signal templates, describe the details of the GW190521 detection, and establish the consistency of the model-agnostic reconstruction of GW190521 by cWB with the theoretical waveform model of a binary black hole.

Automated summary

The detection of GW190521 is the heaviest binary black-hole merger observed to date, providing strong evidence for the existence of intermediate-mass black holes. The significance of this observation was determined by the coherent WAVEBURST (cWB) search algorithm, which identified GW190521 with minimal assumptions of its source model.