Revisiting the cosmic string origin of GW190521

Abstract

For the first time we analyse gravitational-wave strain data using waveforms constructed from strong gravity simulations of cosmic string loops collapsing to Schwarzschild black holes; a previously unconsidered source. Since the expected signal is dominated by a black-hole ringdown, it can mimic the observed gravitational waves from high-mass binary black hole mergers. To illustrate this, we consider GW190521, a short duration gravitational-wave event observed in the third LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA observing run. We show that describing this event as a collapsing cosmic string loop is favoured over previous cosmic string analyses by an approximate log Bayes factor of $22$. The binary black hole hypothesis is still preferred, mostly because the cosmic string remnant is non-spinning. It remains an open question whether a spinning remnant could form from loops with angular momentum, but if possible, it would likely bring into contention the binary black hole preference. Finally, we suggest that searches for ringdown-only waveforms would be a viable approach for identifying collapsing cosmic string events and estimating their event rate. This work opens up an important new direction for the cosmic-string and gravitational-wave communities.