Signs of higher multipoles and orbital precession in GW151226

We present a reanalysis of GW151226, the second binary black hole merger discovered by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration. Previous analysis showed that the best-fit waveform for this event corresponded to the merger of a similar to 14 M-circle dot black hole with a similar to 7.5 M-circle dot companion, and the posterior distribution in mass ratio (q <= 1) is rather flat. In this work, we perform parameter estimation using a waveform model that includes the effects of orbital precession and higher-order radiative multipole modes, and we find that the source parameters of GW151226 shift toward the low q and high effective spin (chi(eff)) region and that q is better measured. The new solution has a log likelihood roughly two points higher than when either higher multipoles or orbital precession is neglected and can alter the astrophysical interpretation of GW151226. Additionally, we find it useful to use a flat-in-chi(eff) prior, which does not penalize the large vertical bar chi(eff)vertical bar region, in order to uncover the higher likelihood region for GW151226. Our solution has several interesting properties: (a) the secondary black hole mass is close to the upper limit of the hypothesized lower mass gap of astrophysical black hole population; and (b) orbital precession is driven by the primary black hole spin, which has a dimensionless magnitude as large as similar to 0.85 and is tilted away from the orbital angular momentum at an angle of similar to 57 degrees. Since GW151226 is a relatively weak signal, an unambiguous claim of the detection of these effects in the signal cannot be made.