Gravitational waves from coalescing black holes: a quantitative study from fundamental physics

This paper shows that it is possible to understand the key features of the gravitational waves emitted by coalescing binary systems from the concepts of fundamental physics. We utilize no more then the contents typically covered in introductory courses on mechanics and electromagnetism that are common to all STEM undergraduate programs. We meticulously deduce the equations required to comprehend the results announced in the paper by the LIGO Collaboration for the event GW150914. Our quantitative description is at least of order of magnitude accurate. We estimate the chirp mass of the coalescing black holes, the total mass of the system, the individual black hole masses, the size of the binary system, and the distance from the Earth to the black holes of the event GW150914. These estimates are performed by utilizing the available data for the amplitude of the gravitational waves, the frequency at the beginning of the inspiral phase, the chirp frequency, and the time until coalescence. In order to illustrate the power of our approach, we apply our quantitative analysis to the first ten gravitational waves detections announced by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration from February 12, 2016 (discovery event) until June 20, 2020 (event GW190814).

Keywords:
Gravitational waves; coalescing black holes; measurable parameters; fundamental physics