• DOI:10.1088/0004-637X/725/2/1918
• Corpus ID: 46933635

THE BLACK HOLE MASS DISTRIBUTION IN THE GALAXY

@article{Ozel2010THEBH,
  title={THE BLACK HOLE MASS DISTRIBUTION IN THE GALAXY},
  author={Feryal Ozel and Dimitrios Psaltis and Ramesh Narayan and Jeffrey E. McClintock},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal},
  year={2010},
  volume={725},
  pages={1918-1927}
}

• F. Ozel, D. Psaltis, +1 author J. McClintock
• Published 14 June 2010
• Physics
• The Astrophysical Journal

We use dynamical mass measurements of 16 black holes in transient low-mass X-ray binaries to infer the stellar black hole mass distribution in the parent population. We find that the observations are best described by a narrow mass distribution at 7.8 {+-} 1.2 M{sub sun}. We identify a selection effect related to the choice of targets for optical follow-ups that results in a flux-limited sample. We demonstrate, however, that this selection effect does not introduce a bias in the observed distribution and cannot explain the absence of black holes in the 2-5 M{sub sun} mass range. On the high-mass end, we argue that the rapid decline in the inferred distribution may be the result of the particular evolutionary channel followed by low-mass X-ray binaries. This is consistent with the presence of high-mass black holes in the persistent, high-mass X-ray binary sources. If the paucity of low-mass black holes is caused by a sudden decrease of the supernova explosion energy with increasing progenitor mass, this would have observable implications for ongoing transient surveys that target core-collapse supernovae. Our results also have significant implications for the calculation of event rates from the coalescence of black hole binaries for gravitational wave detectors.