English

Binary Black Hole Phase Space Discovers the Signature of Pair Instability Supernovae Mass Gap

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-09-12 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

The rapidly expanding catalog of gravitational-wave detections provides a powerful probe of the formation history of compact binaries across cosmic time. In this work, we extend the Binary Compact Object (BCO) phase-space framework to the full set of events in the GWTC-4 catalog to map the observed binary formation scenarios in a data-driven way. Applying this framework, we identify distinct regions of phase-space associated with different channels and discover for the first time a unique mass-cutoff scale in a data-driven way. The mapping of these on different formation channels reveals a population of first-generation (1G) black holes sharply truncated at approximately 45.5 MM_\odot, consistent with the theoretically predicted pair-instability supernova (PISN) mass gap. These findings demonstrate the capability of the BCO phase-space to disentangle overlapping formation pathways, establish robust connections between gravitational-wave observations and binary evolution, and highlight the potential of upcoming observing runs to reveal rare populations and exotic origins.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.09123,
  title  = {Binary Black Hole Phase Space Discovers the Signature of Pair Instability Supernovae Mass Gap},
  author = {Samsuzzaman Afroz and Suvodip Mukherjee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.09123},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

18 pages, 10 figures