| Abstract: | On August 14, 2017 at 10:30:43 UTC, the Advanced Virgo detector and the two
Advanced LIGO detectors coherently observed a transient gravitational-wave
signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes, with a
false-alarm-rate of $lesssim$ 1 in 27000 years. The signal was observed with a
three-detector network matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 18. The inferred
masses of the initial black holes are $30.5_{-3.0}^{+5.7}$ Msun and
$25.3_{-4.2}^{+2.8}$ Msun (at the 90% credible level). The luminosity distance
of the source is $540_{-210}^{+130}~mathrm{Mpc}$, corresponding to a redshift
of $z=0.11_{-0.04}^{+0.03}$. A network of three detectors improves the sky
localization of the source, reducing the area of the 90% credible region from
1160 deg$^2$ using only the two LIGO detectors to 60 deg$^2$ using all three
detectors. For the first time, we can test the nature of gravitational wave
polarizations from the antenna response of the LIGO-Virgo network, thus
enabling a new class of phenomenological tests of gravity. |
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