What is recorded here?
The LIGO Scientific, Virgo and KAGRA collaborations analysed the post-merger signal of GW250114, detected by the two LIGO instruments in January 2025. Fits to the post-peak waveform favored a second rapidly damped component alongside the dominant ringdown, consistent within uncertainty with a Kerr black hole’s first overtone. A separate analysis of the full inspiral–merger–ringdown waveform constrained additional mode-frequency deviations and found consistency with the modeled general-relativity prediction.
Source-linked catalogue note. A detailed explanatory guide has not yet been prepared for this entry.
Scientific scope
Virgo and KAGRA instruments were offline for the event, though their collaborations coauthored the analysis. Mode identification, significance and parameter bounds depend on fit start time, noise, priors and waveform model. The full-signal 440-mode model does not allow its amplitude to vanish and alone cannot establish the mode’s presence. The second overtone was not confidently measured. The v1 paper discloses a likelihood error affecting some PCA and prior-event comparison analyses; other corrected and unaffected analyses must not be conflated with those results. The 2026 published version and raw data have not been independently reconciled. The supplementary area-law comparison uses inspiral and post-inspiral portions of the same event split in frequency, with Kerr area and numerical-relativity fits. The authors report 4.8σ under a difference-of-means statistic and 3.7σ for a fractional-area statistic, not interchangeable significances; stronger GR assumptions and full-signal use make comparison with the separate time-domain analysis conditional. The residual test reports p = 0.34 for this one event, which does not prove GR or exclude every alternative.
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People and systems
Credit belongs to the cited collaborations. The individual author list is incomplete; no sole discoverer or individual effort share is inferred. The recorded author list is incomplete.
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English catalogue narrative
GW250114 ringdown constrains black-hole oscillation modes
The LIGO Scientific, Virgo and KAGRA collaborations analysed the post-merger signal of GW250114, detected by the two LIGO instruments in January 2025. Fits to the post-peak waveform favored a second rapidly damped component alongside the dominant ringdown, consistent within uncertainty with a Kerr black hole’s first overtone. A separate analysis of the full inspiral–merger–ringdown waveform constrained additional mode-frequency deviations and found consistency with the modeled general-relativity prediction.
Scientific scope
Virgo and KAGRA instruments were offline for the event, though their collaborations coauthored the analysis. Mode identification, significance and parameter bounds depend on fit start time, noise, priors and waveform model. The full-signal 440-mode model does not allow its amplitude to vanish and alone cannot establish the mode’s presence. The second overtone was not confidently measured. The v1 paper discloses a likelihood error affecting some PCA and prior-event comparison analyses; other corrected and unaffected analyses must not be conflated with those results. The 2026 published version and raw data have not been independently reconciled. The supplementary area-law comparison uses inspiral and post-inspiral portions of the same event split in frequency, with Kerr area and numerical-relativity fits. The authors report 4.8σ under a difference-of-means statistic and 3.7σ for a fractional-area statistic, not interchangeable significances; stronger GR assumptions and full-signal use make comparison with the separate time-domain analysis conditional. The residual test reports p = 0.34 for this one event, which does not prove GR or exclude every alternative.
Reading status
This is a source-linked WRS catalogue note. A full explanatory guide and independent scientific reconstruction have not been completed for this entry. Read the identified original work for its complete narrative and arguments.
People and systems
Credit belongs to the cited collaborations. The individual author list is incomplete; no sole discoverer or individual effort share is inferred.