Gravitational wave astronomy has been firmly established with the detection of gravitational waves from the merger of ten stellar mass binary black holes and a neutron star binary .
This paper reports on the all-sky search for gravitational waves from intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo network .
The search uses three independent algorithms : two based on matched filtering of the data with waveform templates of gravitational wave signals from compact binaries , and a third , model-independent algorithm that employs no signal model for the incoming signal .
No intermediate mass black hole binary event was detected in this search .
Consequently , we place upper limits on the merger rate density for a family of intermediate mass black hole binaries .
In particular , we choose sources with total masses M = m _ { 1 } + m _ { 2 } \in [ 120 , 800 ] M _ { \odot } and mass ratios q = m _ { 2 } / m _ { 1 } \in [ 0.1 , 1.0 ] .
For the first time , this calculation is done using numerical relativity waveforms ( which include higher modes ) as models of the real emitted signal .
We place a most stringent upper limit of 0.20 Gpc ^ { -3 } yr ^ { -1 } ( in co-moving units at the 90 % confidence level ) for equal-mass binaries with individual masses m _ { 1 , 2 } = 100 M _ { \odot } and dimensionless spins \chi _ { 1 , 2 } = 0.8 aligned with the orbital angular momentum of the binary .
This improves by a factor of \sim 5 that reported after Advanced LIGO ’ s first observing run .